


Haemoglobin

by GraphDesino



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Body Horror, Cyborgs, Gen, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraphDesino/pseuds/GraphDesino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raiden-centric, pre-MGS4. From human to monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They would tell him later he was fully conscious for the procedure, but if he did remember it, his psyche had sealed it away from him, as something too horrific to relive. What he did recall amounted to little more than snapshots - brief, fleeting visions of blood, scalpels, entrails. The only vivid detail he really registered was the drills. The searing snarl of electric drills boring into living bone.

The first certainty he felt, after that long stretch of narcotic blackness, was a faint tingling in his cheeks. He was lying down on what he guessed was some kind of bedless gurney, and when he tried, instinctively, to sit up, he found he was bound tightly down. He peeled his eyes open, squinting tightly as a lamp shone on him. An opaque sheet covered him from his shoulders down.  
  
Something nearby beeped, and a tiny commotion erupted around him.   
  
He could just barely make out their outlines - tall men, faceless behind surgical masks and thick goggles, scurrying over him like vultures picking through a corpse. They spoke in incomprehensible, hushed tones to one another, and he could hear the soft click of their footsteps on the floor below him. His eyes were unwilling to focus, but he tried to fix his gaze on one of them. Their gloved hands darted in and out of his dim field of view; he knew they were touching him, but he was numb, save for the pins-and-needles stinging of his face.  
  
What are you doing? he tried to ask. He managed only a wheezing exhale.  
  
That was when the first note of panic hit.   
  
He tried again. Nothing, not even a sputter or cough. A few of the men glanced over at him, even seemed to meet his eyes for a moment, before averting themselves again. He jolted up against his restraints, that initial prickle of fear lending strength to him, but he barely budged. More beeping in the background, higher-pitched now and more frequent.   
  
Jack gasped in, and tried to scream. Nothing. He was mute.   
  
He couldn’t help but think the worst - that those fuckers had taken his voice. Cut out his vocal cords. This was his punishment. Silence forever. So he couldn’t speak their secrets.  
  
A wave of nausea swept him at the idea, followed swiftly by a hateful indignation. He struggled up again, this time with enough determination to rock the gurney slightly, eyes bulging. Two doctors quickly pressed him back down, and he fell back instantly, shocked by his own frailness. He watched their hands slink down him again, and inwardly shuddered, picturing them poking and prodding at his slit-open throat.  
  
He could make out most of his surroundings now - whitewashed and pale, like a hospital, but every spare inch of space filled by whirring, blinking equipment. His neck was held fast, but from the cursory look he got, he appeared to be in a surgical suite. A vague, alkaline stench of antiseptic and blood hung heavy in the air, and if he stared into his peripheral vision long enough, he could see drainage tubes trailing down from his jaw. An IV bag hung above him, swinging placidly in time with his movements.   
  
It occurred to him: had they done anything else?   
  
Something at his back whirred, and the bed began to fold, forcing him to sit up. He drummed his fingers under the sheets. Nothing, no sensation at all - but he wasn’t paralyzed. If he’d been injured that badly, they wouldn’t have bound him. So what was it?   
  
The fabric draping him slid down, collecting in loose folds at his stomach, but his head was still immobile, and he couldn’t manage to look down at himself. A doctor peered into his eyes, shining a small light in each one, and hurriedly recorded the results, as if he’d never seen anything so fascinating in his life . Another checked his ears (or so he guessed; he could hear him fumbling around), and one ran a skin thermometer across his forehead, furrowing his brow slightly at it as the reading came up.   
  
“The fever’s down, but the grafts are all still abscessing…”   
  
“What would you suggest?” He could hear another doctor’s voice, distinct from the rest.  
  
“There’s not much to be done, aside from continuing the antibiotics.” A pause, then footsteps, as the first doctor moved behind him. “This is a good sign, Doctor. Even with the infections, these are some of the cleanest lines we’ve seen. And even now, at this early stage of healing, the patient seems quite responsive and alert.”  
  
Jack wanted to shriek at that, to turn and look at them. They spoke of him so distantly, but they were just inches from him, watching him breathe. He jerked against the bed again, in futility, lips quirking up into a silent snarl.   
  
The first man spoke again, his voice carrying a distinct Russian accent. “He’s still quite weak, but at this rate, he should be under your supervision in a matter of weeks.”  
  
“Weeks?” A note of irritation in the second voice. “The patient survived the procedure, didn’t he? Why wait? He doesn’t need to be fully healed to do a few walk cycles.”   
  
“He was unresponsive until this evening.”  
  
“But he is conscious now, isn’t he?”  
  
Jack felt a thrill of horror as the click of shoes echoed, sensing their eyes on him. His mind raced. How long had he been out? What procedure? And what did they mean, he survived? That meant they were keeping him alive - that whatever they’d done, they’d wanted him to live through it.   
  
He’d heard of the Patriots ‘reclaiming’ human bodies before. Usually it was through forced sterilization of somekind, often following a kidnapping. There were always grisly tales from the rumor mill, though - intentionally botched abortions, mismatched blood transfusions, injections of bovine spongiform and flesh-eating strep. Jack had never believed them capable of any such atrocities; it seemed excessive and messy, and the logistics of it all would be difficult, to say the least.  
  
But then, it was so easy to forget - the Patriots could do anything.   
  
“At least let me check for sensation and movement.” The second voice seemed openly agitated now.  
  
“All right.”   
  
Jack made a new show of his thrashing, the restraints unflinching against him, and he felt the urge to grunt or growl, felt the sound try to rise in his throat. The men were both still behind him, their cohorts busying themselves now by taking notes. He heard a few loud snaps, like pieces of plastic popping apart.  
  
“Removing paralytic collar now.”  
  
Another noise, metallic this time. Whatever had been binding his neck opened up, a clamshell hinge holding the two halves of it together, and he lifted his head out, to whip his gaze wildly around the room. Hollow, masked faces, tubes and wires leading from beneath the bed to God knows where, and medical monitors behind him.  
  
He caught sight of something in his peripheral vision, a flash of crimson-red and grey that made him pause. The thought crossed his mind, but only briefly. He knew he had to look. Had to see how bad the damage was. He did his best to steel himself, forcing his already panicked breathing to calm. Gingerly, as though fearful of snapping his neck, he dropped his head, his eyes refocusing on his own chest.  
  
Oh God, he mouthed. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck.   
  
No flesh. A tangle of wires and rods, a half-bare endoskeleton, the motors and cables arranged in a parody of human anatomy. His forearms and most of his chest had been covered by a sort of outer shell, silvertone and lightly bloodstained, and he was covered with sensors - EKG wires, biofeedback electrodes, and inhuman-seeming devices he’d never seen before. He tried to move a fingertip. One electronic finger lazily twitched in reply.   
  
He only had a full second or two of calm lucidity before the next wave hit him. All at once, the numbness was replaced by a flood of sensation - the icy metal of the gurney at his back, the constricting tension of the restraints crisscrossing him, the taste of stale, airplane-cabin air on his tongue - and pain, pain beyond description, beyond what he thought the human body could experience. A deeper pain, a more internal pain, than he’d ever known. It was worst at the base of his neck and the joint of his jaw - but it was everywhere, all-encompassing.  
  
They must have seen him jolt, because the masked faces watching him started scribbling furiously.  
  
One of the men at his back moved a hand down between his shoulders, and he felt a long, chokingly powerful stinging sensation, his breath staggering. A pause, and the hand moved to his mid back. Another sting, nauseating. A third when his touch reached his kidneys; a fourth when it reached the broad skin above his tailbone. He writhed, hanging his head as the room spun.  
  
Slow, contemplative footsteps behind him. The doctors circled back around to face him, peeling off their rubber gloves with practiced snaps.   
  
It was hard to make out facial features, even in the glaring light. Both of them wore surgical masks, teal swathing their nose and lips. One looked to be in his mid-30’s, baby-faced with a sharp, narrow jaw, blue eyes bright and fascinated-seeming behind his wire-rimmed glasses. The other was much older, his hair greyed, thick aviator spectacles enough to mute his already weary expression.   
  
The younger one spoke to him, his ID badge bobbing on a lanyard around his neck. Samuel Hudson, M.D.  
  
“Please blink twice if you can hear me.”  
  
Helplessly, still in the throes of his own panic, he blinked an affirmative.   
  
“Good.” A pause as the onlooking doctors noted something in unison, and he glanced back over one shoulder, nodding to them. “Patient appears to be making eye contact, as well.”    
  
Hudson turned back towards him, adopting that quiet, icy-calm, condescending tone again. The perky young face of the Patriots.  
  
“You likely don’t fully understand what has happened to you. You don’t need to understand. We will give you instructions as necessary. You will respond to questions accurately and to the best of your ability. You will perform or attempt to perform all tasks asked of you. Failure to correctly follow any of these instructions will result in denial of water, electrical shock, or euthanization.” He took a breath, smiling. “Please blink twice if you understand.”  
  
No questions. No method of communication, beyond that of a trained simian. No knowledge of where he was, who he was speaking to, and what the fuck they’d done to him. A threat of death should he disobey.   
  
He was not a subservient man by nature, but the world had beaten it into him. He knew true authority when faced with it. Knew the difference between independence and suicidal insubordination.   
  
He blinked.  
  
“You can feel your left and right extremities. Blink twice if this is correct.”  
  
Blink, blink.  
  
“You can hear in both ears.”   
  
Blink, blink.  
  
They checked the rest of his body that way - fingers, toes, chest, jaw. It took what felt like hours, until the fever-haze had started overtaking him again. With some prodding, the older, Russian doctor persuaded his colleague to let him rest, and he watched them inject something into his IV.   
  
The boozy, cloudy warmth of drug-drowsiness descended over him before he had a chance to fear the worst. He’d never been more thankful for sleep.

 


	2. Chapter 2

He slipped in and out of consciousness periodically, and when he was out – for they always sent him to an artificial twilight sleep – he never knew how much time had passed. He never fought to stay awake, though; the blackness gave him respite from the pain, and from the looming dread of constant, mortal danger. And dreamless sleep was rare.

Every so often, when he awoke, he’d notice something different. His hearing sharpened. His vision focused correctly. The plating that covered his chest spread up his arms, hiding more and more of those wild tangles of wires. In his fevered delirium he was never sure what he was looking at. His own body? Or something concocted by his infection-scarred mind? They never left him awake long enough to figure it out, though he had his suspicions.

But as the fever tapered off, the drugs stopped flowing. And, unaided and unhindered by them, the tests began.

Simple, repetitive. Vision tests, hearing tests, coordination tests, cognition tests. Not unlike the sort of test he could faintly recall being given as a boy, while philanthropists with accents foreign to him battered him with questions. The procedures themselves were more tedious than unpleasant, save for the infuriatingly condescending tone of that Dr. Hudson’s voice, but they left his physical being well enough alone. He supposed he should consider that a luxury. 

But the stretches of consciousness grew longer, and the seething pain radiating through him dulled. After what he presumed to be five days or so, it was almost bearable, save for the throbbing in his jaw. Pain was easy, though. Pain was familiar. If he’d known what was to come, he would’ve almost savored it.

When his mind was finally free from the fever’s blurring grasp, he became ravenously hungry. It was unsurprising - he figured he hadn’t eaten in a week. But they didn’t feed him. Didn’t so much as offer him a sip of water. They would march in, unhook that thick, plastic collar from around his neck, ask him to cross his arms or multiply two by three or touch his finger to his nose, and shackle him again. Rinse and repeat, five or six times a day. But they never spoke to him, beyond the protocols of their tests.

Only one of them - the Russian man, with wrinkled eyes - seemed to realize he wasn’t a child. That he was still very capable of communicating his thoughts and desires, albeit without a voice. He even greeted Jack, sometimes, knowing full-well he couldn’t answer.

Another day or two passed, or so he figured. It could have been weeks. The lights never dimmed in his hospital suite. Hunger gnawed at him in waves, his throat dry and tongue rough from disuse. It was a mortal sort of thirst; he knew he would be dying, were it not for the IV dripping mockingly above his gurney. Just enough to keep him alive. Nowhere near enough to sate him. His lip cracked, so chapped from dryness, and when he ran his tongue over it, to catch the tiny bead of blood, it did little to soothe him. His blood tasted strange - less metallic, more alcoholic. Almost sweet. 

With every hour the thought of food and drink threatened to consume his mind, his last vestige of freedom. Maddening, in the truest sense. His baser instincts were sure he was dying, no matter how often he glared up at those tubes dangling overhead.

That night - or what he presumed to be night, when the footsteps echoing outside his suite grew more sporadic and silent - the Russian came to see him again. 

“Good evening,” he murmured, tapping his pencil against the plastic clipboard he always toted. “Last test for today.” He pulled a small box of flashcards out of his pocket. Bright and colorful, with massive print, like what a first grade teacher might use. He would be tested on shapes today.

Jack watched him, eyes bulging wide. A slight nod, the collar still restricting him. He wheezed, another futile attempt at speech. He’d learned quickly that his muteness was permanent, but attempting to speak often got their attention. As if he were saving it for something important. 

It worked. The Russian hesitated. “I am going to remove your collar now.”

Jack blinked his assent, and the doctor strode around his gurney, undoing the snaps at the nape of his neck. The device loosened, the feeling in his body returning with a rush. He jerked his head back, to look up at the Russian, one hand tapping frantically at the edge of his gurney.

He peered down at him, through those thick glasses. “Is something wrong?” 

Jack tried to swallow, closing his eyes in a long, mournful blink. It rapidly dawned on him that there was no dignified way of doing this. His skin burning with shame, he opened his mouth, let it hang open like a panting dog. He exhaled a few silent, pleading words again, fighting a brief urge to cough. Please, he begged, hoping his dry, crust-rimmed eyes could convey it as well as his voice. 

The Russian’s eyes held a muted glimmer of understanding, and he smiled softly, lowering the box of flashcards for a moment. Jack felt a manic stirring of joy, and nodded, in silent, hopeful confirmation. At long last, direct acknowledgement! 

“I am sorry,” he crooned, the smile morphing into a pitiful, sloping frown. “Nothing by mouth.” 

He offered Jack a brief, conciliatory touch to his matted hair, like he were some wretched stray dog. He withered beneath the doctor’s hand. 

Another day passed, the drip of the IV punctuating every third second. His only way of keeping time. No sign of the Russian now, just faceless interns tending to all the tangles of tubing. Watering him like a plant. But no Hudson. And no tests. 

He grew restless as he counted the early evening hours. This marked a break in their routine. And it had been a while since they’d put him under. Had he served his purpose? Would the next syringe emptying into his jaw be the one that stopped his heart? 

He managed to worry himself into near panic when he heard the door unlatch. The dull clip of tennis shoes on tile. Hudson. The doctor strode past him, his hand darting out to flick a switch beside his bed, and stood back. The motors whirred again as the bed de-reclined, the straps nagging at Jack’s chest.

A pregnant pause when he was sitting fully upright, his head kept stark and level by the collar. Hudson removed it wordlessly, and he gasped as he slumped forward, never able to fully adjust to that initial rush. The stinging pain down his spine again, tingling, dizzying. Jack felt himself gag, the brief cascade of nausea enough to freeze his thoughts. When the spasm passed, he could move again, unsluggishly, unhindered save for his restraints.

Hudson hovered over him, incredibly undoing the straps and buckles. Jack stared, wide-eyed, incredulous. What the hell was he doing? As if in answer, the doctor stood back from him, crossing his arms when the last restraint fell limp and undone against the gurney.

“Stand up.” Said so simply. A command for a trained pet. 

Jack could only boggle in reply. He twitched a finger. Could he?

“Stand up.” Sharper now.

He fidgeted in his sheets, wire-swathed palms pressing down into the chrome. His hips edged forward an inch. The drainage tube strained at his jaw, and he hissed, his breath coming in hectic pants.

“You need to stand up.” Hudson’s words grew icy, some malice lurking behind his patronizing smile. Or what was left of it.

Jack steeled himself, the room already spinning, and gripped the raised edges of the gurney, before gingerly sliding himself sideways, so his legs hung limply down over one side. The snarls of steel and cables that posed as his legs. He only managed a glimpse at his feet, but they had lost any semblance of humanity; he was to stand on spindly, malformed water-spider-legs, the bowed out shock absorbers by his ankles to bear the weight. How he was to balance, he hadn’t the faintest idea.

But fearfully, he peeled his pelvis from the bed. What choice did he have? 

His legs caught him, somehow holding steady even as that second, awful wave of lightheadedness hit him. The monitors and sensors beeped their protest, but he continued, straightening his electrode-dotted spine. He pushed off fully from the edge of the gurney, trembling arms reflexively held stiff. Dizziness. Weakness. He took a single step, one hand falling back to grip the bedside. He was shaking. So cold. Was he shivering? His shoulders wracked with every breath, uneven and shallow but unnaturally slow.

He raised his head. Hudson’s studious gaze was fixed on him. Scrutinizing every tiny movement.

“Three more steps.” A pen in his hand. Acid in his words. Nothing in his eyes.

Jack obeyed. There was nothing else to do. He willed his leg to lift, willed those sick imitations of muscles to contract. One step, then another. A ghostly gait. He couldn’t breathe. The IV tugged at his neck. The blind terror-panic encroached on him, swallowing up his field of vision. One more step. The wires trailing behind him like a spider’s web.  
.   
His foot touched solid ground, the frozen tile. He stood before his captor, wavering, sick. Panting like an animal, throat cracked and sore, eyes thick with sleep he couldn’t scratch away. 

“Sit down.”

He tried his best. But it was more of a controlled fall; his outstretched arms moved too lazily to properly catch him, and he collapsed back onto his side, shedding a few electrodes in the process. His knees tucked themselves up under him, and he closed his eyes, waiting in his muddled state for the vertigo to fade. 

A long silence. The monitors’ chirps gradually returned to their normal paces. 

He felt a touch on his shoulder. Please, God, no more. 

“Here.” 

Jack forced his eyes to open, to stare woozily up at the doctor. 

Pinched between his fingers was a small plastic stick, no longer than a toothpick and the diameter of a pencil. On one end there was a tiny square of foam, in hospital seafoam green. He offered it to Jack.

“Water.” Said almost sweetly, with another insincere smile stretched across his lips. This was a gracious gift.

Jack snatched the foam swab frantically, the ensuing pang of nausea worth claiming his reward. He nearly swallowed it, so desperate to suck it dry, but it was only slightly damp; it couldn’t have held more than a drop or two. 

He lacked the energy now for disappointment. When he’d gotten every particle of moisture from the tiny sponge, he dropped it beside his gurney, relishing a moment free of that infernal itch in his throat. Exhausted, he curled in tighter against himself, arms tucking up by his chest.

“Good job,” muttered Hudson’s calm monotone, his hands gentle, footsteps soft. Jack almost didn’t notice him reapply the collar. He was too far gone; it was a semiconscious blur beyond that.


	3. Chapter 3

Each time he stood, it grew easier. He shocked himself with how quickly he adjusted to his new center of gravity, and after the first few dizzying attempts, he could manage to keep balance when he walked. Within a few days, he could inch across his hospital suite unaided; before the week was up, he could stride at a reasonable pace.

He found he no longer hated the walking tests. In a strange sense, he anticipated them. It was amazing how human it made him feel, how empowering it was, just to be able to move at will. He was still sealed in his room, naturally, and collared whenever he was unsupervised, but it felt like progress. Healing. He wasn’t so stupid as to be optimistic, but in the extreme short-term, he was faring better. A sickly test subject was of little use to anyone, he knew. Struggling lab animals were put down. Maybe that was too kind for the Patriots, but he was glad to not have to wonder. 

It helped, of course, that the Russian typically proctored the ambulatory exams. He barely saw Hudson.

They sedated him very little, if at all, but the awful pain was now a mere soreness, tolerable on its own. The gnawing hunger and desperate thirst faded away, as if his body had simply forgotten them. It was a gradual acclimatization; he’d only noticed when one of the interns checking up on him paused to take a swig from her plastic water bottle, and he’d felt nothing, no semblance of the jealous, animalistic neediness that once consumed him. Such a change would’ve worried him, but he’d been feeling no weaker, unfed as he was. And it was hard to miss the sensation of starving.

He hadn’t realized how pain- and drug-hazy his mind had been until it started to more permanently clear. When he was bound to his bed, awaiting his next test, he almost found himself bored. As complacent as one could be with that many tubes embedded in them. At first, he amused himself with fantasies of some grand escape, but as the days eked by, even the slightest change in his surroundings became fascinating. There was a female intern who seemed to be responsible for refilling his IV drip, and when she popped into his room one morning, sporting a few conspicuously bright streaks of red-tinted hair in her ponytail, he spent the duration of her visit staring at them. Tacky highlights - the most interesting part of his day.

But even those check-ups grew more and more sporadic. One day, when he awoke inexplicably opiate-groggy, he realized he could no longer see the blurry outline of the drain in his jaw. Proof of his incremental recovery. 

The Russian spoke to him more openly now, as their brief walks across his room progressed into mild calisthenics. It was a one-way conversation, to be sure, but more akin to what one might say to a morbidly shy young adult, rather than to a pet or toddler. Complete, complex sentences; rhetorical questions; long, meandering anecdotes that trailed off into silence. None of it reverent by any means, but lacking that cruel separation the other doctors seemed to have. Jack was rather fond of him.

He’d lost count of the days by then - two weeks, maybe three? - but one afternoon, while Jack hunched over, attempting hopelessly to touch his toes, the Russian asked him a direct question. 

“You must be getting sick of this room, I am sure.” 

Jack lifted his gaze, almost stupefied. Was this a test? The older man merely chuckled in reply, seemingly bemused by his reaction, and offered him a light, mocking pat on the head. 

“‘Is okay. I would be too. But my dear colleague,” - he said it with all the warmth one might use when describing a spider - “has been pestering me to start you on physical exertion tests, most of which cannot be conducted here.” He sighed, sipping his coffee. 

Jack let his arms fall limp at his sides, a frantic rush of hope swelling in his chest. His first thought was of escape, naturally, but God, even the promise of feeling sunlight on his cheeks again was tantalizing. Anything but this sick-smelling room. He sat up straight, eyes wide with an unspoken question. 

But as if to answer him, the Russian continued, any hint of that melancholy smile fading quickly from his lips. “There is a monitoring room equipped with a treadmill down the hall, and a multipurpose room downstairs…” He folded his arms, fingering the coffee cup handle idly. “It might not be a tropical vacation, but it will be some change, yes?” 

Jack offered him a tiny, almost childish nod, plainly heartbroken. It had been a lot to hope for.

“We are pleased with your progress, you know. Dr. Hudson and I. Your neuropathy is resolving faster than we would’ve hoped.” Another sip of coffee, his gaze flitting back over to Jack’s chart. “He is…. anxious. You may even start these tests tomorrow, if we can get the facility cleared for use. But I am merely grateful you’ve recovered from the initial procedure. Meningitis took the last three patients before we had even gotten them to stand.” 

His eyes followed the doctor as he paced, drawn to the lanyard around his neck. He didn’t make a habit of wearing it, but today his ID badge bobbed against his chest, twirling against itself. Jack squinted, trying to make out the name. He couldn’t help but be curious; reducing him to merely “the Russian” didn’t seem right, even in his own head. Even a nickname would’ve felt more proper. 

At long last, he caught a stray glimpse. Dr. Drago P. Madnar. Ghoulish name, but not unfitting for a greying old Soviet-era spook like him. 

Madnar glanced up from his chart abruptly, and Jack ducked his head back down, bending over as if to re-reach for his toes. Another brief, weary smile. 

“Apologies. I do not mean to be grim.” He polished off the last of his coffee, stifling a cough as he took a final sip. “It is just good to see you doing well.” As he paused to clear his throat, Jack exchanged another, fleeting glance with him, studying the lines of his sunken face. Was he wrong, or was there a sort of… burgeoning friendship in his tone? 

He forced an attempt at professionalism when he spoke again, pushing up his glasses. “Now, if you could touch your toes three more times…” 

The next day passed more easily, and Jack found himself on pins and needles, the anticipation almost palpable. Much as he dreaded the thought of another round of tests, his restlessness was intolerable now, the collar strapped around his neck still keeping him limp, motionless. 

When the time came, though, his excitement dulled to apprehension. A large group of doctors - Hudson, Madnar, and at least four or five he didn’t recognize - came to retrieve him, all flooding into his suite at once. Their gloved hands picked apart his restraints in near-synchronization, and they all but pulled him to his feet, adjusting his monitors and tubes as he moved. He kept waiting for them to remove his collar, but Hudson merely reached around behind it, fiddling around. Jack could make out a plastic-sounding clicking, likely emanating from the base of his neck, but he felt no pain - only relief, as his numbness receded.

He stood, and the lab coat-clad troupe marched him to the edge of his room, his prison. A thick steel sliding door parted for them obediently, and the doctors led him through, one of them wheeling his monitor-laden IV stand behind him.

It was a barren tile hallway, massively long and brilliantly lit. The inhuman, metal-on-ceramic clink of his footsteps and the shrill squeaking of the IV’s rusted third wheel were the only sounds to be heard, and every adjacent room was locked, windowless like his. Each bore a number on the door, but nothing else - no names, no instructions. He managed a quick backwards glance before they’d managed to get very far, more out of curiosity than anything. He was 1418.

It was a rather tedious walk. The Patriot hospital seemed such a desolate place, so wide and sprawling, the air all stale and rank with chemical-stench. He would’ve guessed, from how slowly they inched across it, that it was at least the size of a large shopping mall, maybe larger. And each time he passed another doorway, glancing up at the number emblazoned on it, he wondered - what hells were they conducting in there? What poor bastard slept in 1428, what laws of science were being pissed on in 1289? 

Only once did he see any sign of life from one of the other rooms. A single scream, female and hoarse with terror. It came from 1467, muffled by the door, and he only caught the first half-second of it before something snuffed it out. It was followed by a loud, horrific gagging noise, which lasted a full second or so. Then silence.

The doctors kept moving, jerking his IV stand along when he hesitated. 

They stopped when they’d reached 1479, and he stumbled inside, the door slamming shut the moment his IV stand cleared the doorway. It looked more like a physical therapist’s office than a hospital room - in place of a bed, a treadmill had been set up, and a stack of weights had been arranged neatly in one corner. A small array of standard vital sign-acquiring equipment hung in a caddy by the door.

What drew his attention, though, was the massive, wall-sized mirror facing him. A two-way mirror. It didn’t take a genius to guess. 

But he was rooted where he stood, hand dropping limply to his sides. Transfixed by the bone-white, monstrous thing staring back at him.

He’d expected his body to look radically different. What parts he hadn’t seen turned out to be much like what his mind’s eye had concocted - a skeletal tangle of cables and cords, motors, circuitry, hydraulics. His silhouette was eerily long and thin, like a spectre of death, and the jagged edges that replaced smoother, more human contours seemed rough-cut, unfinished. He was a prototype. 

But his eyes only briefly skirted over the reflection of his body. His attention was fixed on the alien face staring back at him. Gaunt, hollow, emaciated cheeks, the skin stretched grotesquely thin over his cheekbones. His head had been shaved, but what little hair he’d regrown sprouted in ugly clumps. His eyes had a sunken, corpse-like darkness to them, and were bruised and black, like he’d been beaten. Most of the cartilage of his ears was missing, and in their place, strange, vaguely earphone-shaped devices, grafted to the sides of his head. Their coils of exposed wiring made them look like half-disassembled headphones. 

But the most striking thing was his jaw. Missing in its entirety, from the corners of his mouth down to his throat, and replaced by steel. He had no lower lip now, just metal molded into teeth, and when he gaped at himself, mouth falling open an inch, he could see an inhumanly pale tongue. The joint of his mandible had, perhaps, the least amount of protective outer shielding on his body, for when he moved, he could see the tiny mechanisms click and tighten. His cheeks bore a sickly yellow tint, still stained from iodine, and the lines where metal met skin were inflamed, greenish-red with the last remnants of infection. 

He felt his eyes sting and water.

Oh, Christ, he thought. They didn’t take my tear ducts. They didn’t take my eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

He had grown up with an unusually strong, indomitable instinct to survive. It had always been a given; his own life was more precious to him than even the basest tenets of morality. It was never a conscious choice on his part - rather, the entire concept of ever allowing oneself to perish, regardless of the circumstances, had always gone over his head. He’d seen children starve. Grow weak from dehydration. But he had never let himself be one of them, no matter how gruesome the realities of survival were. He feared death - not in the philosophical, abstract sort of way, but as an animal knew to fear it.

Until that afternoon. Until he saw what little was left of him.

At the sight of himself, he had a sudden, overwhelming urge to bash his head into the mirror. Maybe if he did it hard enough, he thought crazily, he could manage to give himself a fatal concussion. Or something. He didn’t have a throat to slit, and — could he maybe manage to jam something into his eye socket? With enough penetrative force to splatter his brain, no less? A quick glance around the room - nothing sharp, nothing especially blunt or trauma-inducing, nothing even remotely lethal. His eyes turned to the IV monitor tethered to him. Even if he knew how to work it, he doubted he could manage to poison himself. They’d weaned him off of those drugs some time ago, as far as he knew.

The mental spasm passed. He hadn’t outwardly moved, save for a few sweeping gazes. But it had been a deliciously twisted little fantasy. He could see himself so clearly, in this new, alien body, a crumpled heap in a pool of his own — or, well, whatever blood pulsed through him now. Done. Finished. No longer forced to endure such suffering. The Patriots could find another lab rat, for all he cared. They would likely kill him anyway, sooner or later. In that instant, he felt no desire to prolong the inevitable. He’d been ready and willing. Not able.

But it was only an impulse. He didn’t realize how long he was frozen there, mesmerized, but a booming voice from a hidden intercom snapped him back to the present.

“Please step onto the treadmill,” screeched a distorted Hudson, voice echoing from speakers above him.

Thoughtlessly, he did as he was told, the IV stand wheeling doggedly behind him.

It was an unimpressive piece of equipment for such a state-of-the-art building, hardly different from the sort he’d seen at health clubs. As he stepped onto it, metallic-skeletal fingers hooking around the handgrips, it sparked to life, the rubber belt jolting beneath him. Reflexively, he readjusted himself, spine straightening.

The pace was mild at first - 3 MPH, according to the LED indicator on the machine’s main display. But as the seconds passed, and his gait grew more stronger, the treadmill’s speed ramped up. He tried to keep pace. 6 MPH. 10. 15. He threw a stray, desperate glance up towards the mirror, recoiling when his eyes met that ghoulish corpse-face again. 22 MPH. He was wheezing, hands clawed into the handlebars, his feet trailing sluggishly at the edge of the belt.

He was failing the test, he knew. Surely they would stop him before he ran himself down, if he had, indeed, been making their benchmarks. But as the speedometer crept up to 23, he felt his strength give, his shoulders heaving harshly with every deep, pounding breath.

For a single, terrifying moment, he lost traction entirely, and found himself reeling backwards, off-balance. He was going to fall. He doubted he could stand back up, doubted further his ability to catch himself. This was it. Proof of his insufficiency. His uselessness. They’d promised him torture if he failed, and the Patriots were known to keep their word. He tried to brace himself for the inevitable fall.

And then something shifted. Something snapped. He doubted it was any tangible change, but he could feel it ripple through him, racing down every nerve. He gasped, vision blurring, the electric sensation drowning him in a dizzying, giddy rush.

He shot forward, suddenly, overwhelmed by an urge to sprint. His weariness evaporated, boundless energy in its place, and in seconds he was edging up against the treadmill’s handgrips, its speed cranking up in time. 24 MPH. 25, 26. And he was barely winded now. He gaped uncomprehendingly down at his own hawkish hands as he ran, alien legs galloping beneath him. The cables tensing each finger, the long strands of thin wire posing as tendons. 28 MPH.

He had never allowed himself to stop and wonder. Never had the presence of mind, until now. But when he gazed up at himself in the mirror, at the intricate machinations of his every joint and digit, he wanted to know.

What was Frankenstein’s monster capable of?

———-

They’d returned him to his room after a few hours. Always the same, to the point of predictability - he’d run until the treadmill outpaced him, and then that euphoric energy would shoot up his spine, enough to make him frantic, hyperactive. The glow would fade after a minute or so, and then they’d allow him a brief reprieve, before the intercom barked orders at him to resume.

But once they’d gotten their fill, the small brigade of doctors escorted him, adjusted his collar back to its usual, fully-numbing state, and reattached all the tubes and cables he’d left behind. Considering how hard they’d worked him, he felt no worse for wear, the mere memory of those adrenaline-blasts of strength enough to keep him awake. They nodded silent goodbyes as they sealed him away again, only Madnar pausing long enough to wave.

When they had left, he found himself oddly lonely. Isolated with his thoughts, and the fresh knowledge of his own horrific appearance. He figured they’d be back before long, now that they’d changed up his protocol. In the meantime, lest the boredom drive him ever-closer to total, psyche-collapsing panic, he tried to amuse himself by gazing at his left hand. Studying the vaguely skeletal layout of the metal rods, watching as silver, springlike coils of muscle made honest efforts to contract. Even with his nerves muted as they were, he could still manage a finger twitch, if he focused on it hard enough.

Eerie to think he’d wanted to die only a few hours ago. How sudden and how sure he’d been of it. It was hard to stave off the self-pity sometimes; he was a miserable thing now, subhuman, doomed to a gradual, wasting death. Even if he felt stronger now, he’d known, from those few, fleeting looks - his was the face of a very sick man. The pallor of a chemotherapy patient and the shrink-wrap skin of a POW.

He missed sunlight. Missed the New York scent of smog and coffee. Missed the simple, visceral pleasure of bad delivery pizza at some ungodly hour. This had gone on for the better part of a month. It was hard to keep reminding himself he would die in this bed; he was growing impatient. As if this were some injury from which he would someday recover.

The sound of Madnar fumbling with his door interrupted his brooding. He perked up visibly as the doctor slipped inside, a large styrofoam cube cradled in his arms.

“Afternoon,” he greeted cordially, as if to a casual friend, as the door slammed shut behind him. Grunting softly with exertion, he slid the crate onto a nearby traytable, nearly knocking over a few diagnostic instruments in the process. “Your tests earlier went exactly as hoped. We can proceed.” Said with an almost childish glee. Jack found it disconcerting.

Once he no longer had to shoulder the (evidently quite heavy) weight of the thing, Madnar set about arranging a small workstation, producing a tray of odd surgical tools from a cabinet above him. When he’d finished, he turned to face his patient again, something of a broken smile on his lips. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves as he spoke, pacing behind him to remove his collar.

“I am sure you are wondering what it was you felt in there.”

A vigorous nod in reply, once his neck was freed. The Russian strode back over to the crate.

“Then allow me to show you—” He peeled off the adhesive seals lining the lid, and popped it off, releasing with it a sharp chemical smell. “—my work.”

He hunched over, reaching in with both hands, and lifted out a strange, slimy-looking object, dull grey in color and a little over a foot long. One end tapered off into a thin strip, which ended abruptly, and the other came to a dull point, giving it a strange, elongated almond shape. It couldn’t have been more than a few inches thick, like a fish fillet, but as the doctor handled it, he could’ve sworn he saw it subtly thicken and twitch.

“Show me your left arm,” he murmured, still grinning, “palm-up.”

Jack obeyed. Madnar set down the weird, stringy-seeming shape on the edge of the gurney, his fingertips peeling away from it with frantic caution. He took his patient’s hand in his own, gently turning and shifting his wrist, before plucking the narrow end of the grey thing between his fingertips, and depositing it in a tiny groove beneath his metallic pseudo-palm. Jack could feel a short, gruesome click as it slid into place, reverberating through him like the creak of a bone.

“There we are,” Madnar mumbled, as he reached down for the greyish thing’s wider end. In the same precise, fluid motion, he slipped it into a notch above Jack’s elbow. Another click. He cringed.

The Russian must’ve caught that. He hesitated, the frail smile faltering before reappearing at double strength. He released Jack’s hand, scooting back an inch. “Flex your wrist now.”

To his surprise, he had a great deal more mobility now; he hadn’t realized how stiff his hand was. He watched, wide-eyed, as the silver shape coiled and stretched, lending a familiar fluidity to his movements. When he sat forward to peer at it more closely, he realized he’d seen those striated bands of off-white metal before; something vaguely similar swathed his thighs and calves.

“Flexor carpalis radialis,” the doctor beamed. “Artificial, of course.”

Jack met his bespectacled eyes, cocking his head in an exaggerated gesture of curiosity. Proudly he continued.

“Tough fibers woven into muscle. Incomparably strong.” He ducked over the foam cube again, before producing from it several more silvery strips. He laid them out on the gurney as he spoke.“It tenses up just as real muscle does, when you run a current through it. Each little sacromere piloted by a nanomachine. They are smart enough to calculate exactly how much force is needed to push, lift or pull, and then…” He paused, clipping another ribbed slice of muscle into Jack’s wrist. “They flex. They can support thousands of times their own weight, in theory… With enough musculature, you could move buildings.”

So he had the strength of Frankenstein’s monster, too. He nodded, as interested in the doctor’s words as he was in a distraction from those awful, jarring clicks.

“But they are expensive.” Madnar hummed softly to himself, pursing his lips in concentration, as he stretched a fresh clump of off-white fibers out, pulling them like an oblong gob of taffy. “Every little fascicle must be assembled by-hand… It is a painstaking process. So we waited to give you anything beyond the bare minimum. Wanted to see how you would tolerate the graft.”

He met Jack’s gaze again, a genuine spark in his eye. “And you lived. Responded well. Going by the results from your leg muscles alone, I was instructed to install the rest.”

The doctor fell silent, muted by his own concentration, until he’d finished with Jack’s hand, the slick-shiny strands of muscle criss-crossing from his fingers to his forearm in an intricate web. He moved each finger, freshly awed by the subtlety with which his joints could bend. A living Grey’s Anatomy sketch. But it was improvement.

“It is so good to have company now,” Madnar whispered, splaying a fat coil of fibers out beside him. “Finally, company.”


	5. Chapter 5

“I grow tired of it sometimes, you know.”

Madnar held his breath, steady fingers easing the segments of tricep together. Jack’s cheeks tensed as he cringed, the reflex already returning. Another penetrating click, and doctor and patient exhaled together.

“The awful cafeteria food, the stiff little bunks we sleep on...” Another pause, another click, another fascicle in its proper place. “Is dreary. Dull. Working on you are the first break in my routine.”

The installation sessions occupied nearly every hour of his day; not long after he woke, the Russian would poke his worn, droopy face into his suite, another foam shipping crate in hand. It was a tiring, tedious process - some of the more tightly-woven pseudo-tendons had taken miniature eternities to secure - but Jack didn’t mind. There were no tests, for those few, slow days.

And Madnar spoke to him. That was nice.

The doctor hunched over him freshly, pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow. “We are not so different from you, _moj metallicheskiy drug_. We do not leave. We stay here and work. And we have not a particle of privacy.” Momentary silence, as Jack felt another click. “There are cameras where we sleep, too. Always watching. In fact,” -- a much more jarring click, before Madnar pulled away, evidently done with the tricep’s insertions -- “I am only telling you this because they know I talk to myself, and would not try to read my lips.”

The man turned away again, fishing around in today’s box for the next muscle group. He produced a long, stringy silver one, the fibers rippling and twitching as he held it. “And, I suppose, I tell you this because I still can. Because you are here to listen.” He knelt back over his patient again, pulling the muscle taut. “For that, I am sorry. It is a one-sided conversation.”

Jack felt more rummaging, prodding, then a click.

“Yes, our lives are so very tiring...”

* * *

 

The next day, Jack felt compelled to tell him he didn’t mind the company.

The doctor strolled in at his usual time, weary-grinning as always, a slightly larger crate hugged to his chest. He set it down on his typical countertop, slipped on a fresh pair of gloves, and undid his patient’s collar, wasting no time in getting the cruel thing off. Another small kindness.

“Good morning,” he chirped, glancing down to meet Jack’s eyes. “Doing your abdomen today. Exciting, yes?” 

He nodded emphatically  in reply, attempting to move his jaw into a smile. Even that feeble effort sent an unpleasant stinging sensation across his facial sutures, and he let his cheeks sink down again. He should’ve guessed. Something else, then. Some other gesture. What did he have left?

Madnar leaned over him again, peering down at his skeletal body, at the twists of wiring and rubber hosing that made up his trunk. Seizing the momentary opportunity, he reached up, hand shooting forward to grip the other man’s wrist. Predictably shocked, the doctor gasped, flinching and recoiling away, but after a moment - after that lit-up look of sheer surprise faded from his bespectacled gaze - he relaxed.

A still moment passed between them, their eyes locked. Jack tried to pour everything into that one look. How much it meant to be treated like a human. Every casual yet vital conversation. And empathy. God, the man had empathy. What a rare and holy thing that could be. 

Slowly, as if his new tendons were made of glass, Madnar peeled away his fingers, took his patient’s palm in his own, and shook his hand. Jack felt his eyes sting again.

“Nothing good lasts here,” the man murmured, voice husky and low. “And you are good.”

He dropped his hand, suddenly misty-eyed.

“There has to be a way. I could not do it alone. But you will be strong, once I have finished. We could do it together.” He stroked his chin, trembling faintly, smoldering fire in his words. “They have nothing left to take from us. Do they not?”

Jack shook his head, balling his gruesome, anatomical-illustration hands into fists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian translates to “my metallic friend”.  **Thanks to[buruaisu-doragon](http://buruaisu-doragon.tumblr.com/) for Russian help.]**


	6. Chapter 6

They plotted over the next week. Or, rather, Madnar offered an assortment of possible escape routes. He rambled as he worked, the surgical mask over his face enough to obscure his lips from the cameras, and Jack merely listened, offering what input he could. A slight tilt of the head. A nod. At one point, when the doctor had made a positively ludicrous suggestion about escaping through air vents, he managed an incredulous glare.

Madnar made most of the preparations on his own, but was careful to keep Jack updated. He’d begun hoarding provisions from the cafeteria, and, at one point, had managed to swipe a co-worker’s security clearance keycard. As the details of their scheme began to crystalize, he verbally rehearsed it with his patient, only pausing to click muscle insertions closed.

By the time his chest was complete, they’d settled on a basic plan of action. And by the time Madnar was plucking away at the sinewy strands of his ankles, they’d set a date.  

* * *

He awoke to an incessant beeping above him. Madnar’s voice echoed in his mind.

_In the night, I will drop my co-worker’s keycard and my watch on the floor near the doorway. I have set your IV to run out before morning check-ins. It will wake you._

A mild yank of his foreams was enough to defeat his restraints, and once he’d freed one hand, he set about unbuckling the rest. When he finished, he ran a hand up his chest, revelling in his new dexterity. His whitish pseudo-flesh felt smooth and cold, the ridges of the striations kissing his fingertips.

_You will still be wearing your paralytic collar when you wake, but I have removed the power supply. You will be free to move._

His fingers curled around the collar’s edge, gripping tight. The thing was much flimsier and thinner than he’d imagined. Effortlessly, he snapped it open, the clamshell hinge falling limply apart. He sat up.

It took a moment or two for the reality of what he’d just done to sink in, but when it did, it drowned him in a wave of euphoria. With that simple snap of plastic, he was freed. His shackles lay broken behind him. He was alone now, unsupervised, and could move as he pleased. He felt a surge ripple through him, indignant and dizzy with the realization of his own power. No longer a toddler, a dependent, a corpse. He was a man.

His hands flew to his forearms, shoulders, chest. Frantically, he ripped off the electrodes and sensors, yanked wires from his body. More beeps. He tore the tangle of adhesive leads from his temple, tossing the cables aside. There were two parallel sets of thick tubes feeding into his back, and he wrenched them away, their rubber seals popping audibly. A whitish fluid leaked steadily from them, forming tiny pools on his gurney. A cacophony of electronic screeching erupted around him, the monitors howling their protests. Last to go was his IV, still buried in his jaw, which he extruded with a full-body flinch. As he stood, he could feel a barely-warm trickle of blood dribble down his jaw. Reflexively, he caught a few drops with the back of his hand.

White. Pale, milky white. He tried to curse, mouthing the words. They’d taken his blood, too - and his nanos, presumably. No way of contacting the outside world, even if he managed to escape. His eyes narrowed in disgust as he watched the droplet dry, his chin still dripping. Was he still a man if he didn’t bleed red?

It didn’t matter, he decided, after a moment of concentrated loathing. Nothing tugged at him, prodded at him, hindered his movement. He was free now.

Quietly, he slipped over to the doorway, still surprised by his own lengthy stride. The keycard and Madnar’s digital watch were waiting for him on the floor, and he snatched them, pausing to worm the watch onto his sinewy wrist.

_The closed-circuit cameras will be playing yesterday’s security footage from 6:10 to 6:40. You have until then to escape your room and descend the maintenance stairwell. There is an exit on the ground floor. I will be waiting._

He checked the time. 6:12. He could do this.

Fingering the keycard, he pried open the door, the unfamiliar click of his footsteps following him. He peered cautiously out into the hallway, checking for passerby, before he inched outside, shoulders ducked.

The endless stretch of white lay before him like a tiled desert, deathly silent save for the whirr of air conditioning. A thousand rooms like his, numbered and sealed away. A whole population of monsters like him. But now, in the early morning calm, the place was lifeless, and as he started for the opposite end of the hall, he felt a sudden chill of fear. That sterile scent threatened to choke him.

He darted for the opposite end of the hall, anticipation growing with every step. This was the Patriots. Was he stupid to think he could elude them? Could do anything against their wishes? The further he ran, each bounding stride inhumanly long, the more convinced he was that he’d overlooked something. That a death squad would be waiting for him in the stairwell, ready with assault rifles to splatter his brain.

Or worse, God forbid, take him back to Room 1418.

He’d made it about two-thirds of the way to the exit when a new noise disturbed the corridor’s calm. He froze instantly, his breath catching. Footsteps. Multiple sets, from what he could tell. The delicate click of leather dress shoes.  Already close, and getting closer.

A choking rush of horror flooded him. He was exposed, defenseless. No darkened corners, no hidden crawlspaces. He had a few seconds at most. Frantically, the panic closing in on him like some predatory beast, he sprinted, the doctors inching ever closer.

He wasn’t going to make it.

Resigning himself as his captors rounded the corner, he picked a door at random — 1467 — and scanned his keycard, spindly fingers miraculously obeying him. The lock unlatched, the card reader’s green LED flashing in greeting, and he threw open the door, bolting inside. He only barely managed to avoid slamming it shut, his own pulse throbbing in his ears.

The room was roughly the same size as his own, but its barren walls gave the impression of open space. Gone were the monitors, the medical equipment, the gurney. It was furnished almost exclusively by a small cot, tucked away in one corner and bolted to the floor, and a standard-sized PC, which had been set up on a wooden return. A well-worn English keyboard and mouse lay on a slide-out desk in front the monitor, and a  knocked-over deskchair sat below it, the wheels still spinning. Diametrically opposed to the exit, there was another, unlatched door, which led to a tiny, mirrorless bathroom. Everything had a distinct greyish tint under the dim fluorescent lighting, and there was a lifelessness to it all, a hopelessness.

He was about to dismiss the room as empty when he saw her.

Crouched by the chair, tiny body curled up and eyes bulbous with terror, was the room’s sole inhabitant, a 5- or 6-year-old girl. She was clad in a baggy, floor-length nightshirt, the same dead hue as the walls, and forest-green treaded socks. It was clear, from the awkward way she sprawled, that she’d fallen out of the deskchair a moment earlier, and there was a brief stillness as she gazed up at him, a profound lack of understanding written on her features. Her whitish, ash-blonde hair had been tied up in a loose bun.

He took a step towards her, and she shrieked.

Instinctively, he dove for her, dropping to his knees and skidding on the floor. The little siren would be the death of him. He cupped a metallic palm to her lips, muffling her, and twisted her head to one side, forcing her to keep eye contact. She gave a few more shrill noises, struggling, but as he pressed one finger to his lips, forming the “shh” sign, she seemed to understand. When he peeled his hand away, she was obediently silent.

A still moment between them followed. He held his breath, listening, as the girl pulled her knees up against her chest . No footsteps inching closer, no hushed human voices. They hadn’t heard her. It was safe.

She regarded him, as he stood, with a mix of terror and fascination, her penetrating gaze drinking him in. In retrospect, he should’ve expected her initial reaction; he’d only been in contact with scientists intimately familiar with his body. He could only imagine how horrific he looked to an outsider, a child.

He glanced down at her again as he started for the doorway. She was trembling faintly, her arms crossed rigidly over her chest, and she was all but gasping with fear, her cheeks as colorless as her room. But she didn’t dare look away from him. She hardly blinked.

As the seconds ticked by, he knew he should leave her, but he lingered. There was something irresistibly intelligent in the way she stared, he thought. Some powerful curiosity. Or maybe it was just the isolation. The fact that he hadn’t seen a stranger in months. Or that she was young, and she was here, and the ID bracelet around her wrist gave no indication of that changing.

“D-D-D-Do…”

He spun on his heels, that little voice tugging at something in him. The little girl swallowed, as if to clear her throat, and tried again, her shoulders unclenching.

“D—… D-Do y-you ha-have a n-n-na-name?”

A nod. He took a few cautious steps towards her, ducking down to be at her eye level. She stiffened, straightening up with an endearingly forced sort of confidence. A heartbeat later, he realized he had no way of answering. Improvising, he drew a line across his throad with one finger, before pointing to his mouth and shaking his head.

“Y-Y—… Y-Y—…” Her hands fell to her sides, and she frowned softly, furrowing her brow. “Y-You can’t… C-Can’t…”

He shook his head again, gaze turning mournful. Before he could dwell on it any longer, the girl flashed him a startlingly sweet sort of smile, and began gesticulating wildly with her hands. It took him a full second or so to recognize what she was doing.

American Sign Language. He’d been required to take an extremely brief crash course in it during his training, between VR sessions and survival skill demonstrations. He’d always doubted its usefulness, preferring to spend his time picking off virtual baddies in the simulator, but the alphabet had come easily to him, and he’d managed to retain a few common phrases.

But that was several long years ago. At first, he could do little beyond stare dazedly at her, mesmerized by the intricate movements of her hands, but gradually, like a long-forgotten foreign tongue, some of the gestures began to seem familiar. She appeared to sense his apprehension, and signed more slowly, going letter-by-letter instead of word-by-word. Enunciating for him.

“ _W-H-A-T I-S YOUR N-A-M-E_ ,” the girl asked him.

Tentatively, his hands seeming to him like unwieldy claws compared to her deft little fingers, he tried to sign a reply.

_“J-A-C-K.”_

Another lightning-flash grin in response. She waved hello. He waved back, the muscles of his wrist contracting and stretching in his peripheral vision.

 _“THAT I-S A”_  — the next sign was pictographic, but he was fairly certain it meant  _good_ , followed by another that he guessed meant  _name_. He gave a feeble semi-grin, letting it fade before it tugged too sharply at his jaw. For a fleeting half-second, she returned it, and instantly he felt an almost giddy surge of joy. He gave a nod of thanks.

His first conversation, if one didn’t count his desperate yes-or-no dialogues with Madnar. And he didn’t. There was something so infinitely rejuvenating —  _re-humanizing_  — about being able to speak freely. And this child not only saw him as human, as sentient, but seemed to take an active interest in him. He gave a short sigh as his pseudo-smile died away.

The more he studied the girl, the more questions he had. Her face, too, had a similar gaunt appearance, albeit far less pronounced, and her eyes seemed to hold a permanent expression of fear, like a beaten animal. The stutter apparent in her soft, barely-audible voice didn’t seem entirely strange, considering her age, but, in contrast with the enthusiasm with which she signed, it puzzled him. He wondered why she was here. What that bracelet signified. She was as much a riddle to him as he was to her.

She began to sign again.  _“A-R-E YOU A D-O-C-T-O-R?”_

He shot her the most exaggeratedly quizzical look he could, and denied it. She was taken aback, eyebrows raised in visible shock.

“ _I-S T-H-A-T W-H-Y YOU W-E-R-E_ ” — she made a gesture that reminded him of a person running. He nodded, and she cupped her hands over her mouth, her shoulders balling up again. A sheen of terror glossed over the light in her eyes. He flinched as though he’d hit her.

As he raised his hands to sign a reply, he froze, a possibility dawning on him. The room in which she lived was a very desolate place. Dim, windowless, empty. She had no personal effects. No toys. No pictures. No other clothing, as far as he could tell. The only color, it seemed, emanated from the computer monitor on her desk. From a cursory glance, he could tell she had an internet browser window open — some text-heavy page, like an article or encyclopedia. Her chair was still knocked on its side; she’d been so shocked by his arrival that she’d managed to bowl herself over. Shocked, he realized, not by his appearance, but by the mere  _sound of the door opening_.

How long had it been since  _she’d_  seen another person?

His eyebrows knit together, he lifted his gaze, offering the girl an OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. This did little to reassure her, so he attempted to elaborate.

_“W-I-L-L N-O-T H-U-R-T YOU.”_

Reluctantly she replied, any hint of her earlier confidence shattered.

 _“W-H-Y D-O YOU L-O-O-K.”_  The girl stopped short, flicking her wrist at him, those cautious eyes scanning down his hulking corpse-body again.

He didn’t respond at first, his own stare turning on the still-alien white muscle and coiled wiring of his forearms. He didn’t know why. He could guess — he’d certainly committed enough sins against the Patriots to warrant this — but he wondered, when had it truly begun? Had the first step towards this freakish new form been the nanomachines? The markings they’d left on his skin? The fuzzy recollections he had of his childhood “check-ups,” of the bright lights and needle-pokes and procedures blurred by laughing gas?

In his peripheral vision, he saw the watch face. A mortal pang of horror struck him when he read the time.

6:37. Three minutes to go.

He grabbed the girl’s forearm and ran.


	7. Chapter 7

He didn’t know why he took her. He would have liked to believe he’d done it out of some heroic paternal instinct, or that he’d known, somehow, how important she would prove to be. But it was a desperate impulse, nothing more. He’d have done anything, so as to not be alone again. The girl was a method of communication, a link to humanity. Another tiny facet of independence he could reclaim.

She certainly hadn’t been expecting it. When he yanked her along, she dragged limply behind him, boneless with shock. He’d nearly reached the doorway before she protested, struggling vainly, but he held fast. She gave up quickly — more quickly than he’d anticipated. As if she hadn’t really wanted to resist. He fumbled with the keycard again — the door was locked on both sides — and managed to swipe it, before shoving the door open and barreling into the hallway.  She skidded after him, her tiny strides struggling to keep up with his.

To survive this — to outsmart the Patriots — meant a flawless execution of Madnar’s escape plan. His haste would prove to be his first critical mistake.

A few yards behind them, in front of room 1459, a woman in scrubs was pushing a small cart of medical supplies. When Jack slammed the door open, his behemoth footsteps echoing, she screamed, staggering backwards and pressing her gloved hands to her facemask. His head whipped around to face her, nearly as startled as she was. Those red highlights in her hair — she was one of his old caretakers, the IV-change girl. The cart rolled forward, tilting to one side, and she bolted, sprinting for the opposite end of the hallway. He started to chase her, after a moment’s hesitation, before turning back to the door. Silencing her — whatever that meant — would likely take longer than simply making a run for it.

He checked his watch. Two minutes.  _Shit_.

He sprinted for the exit, wide-eyed, the little girl clinging to his wrist for dear life. The panicked clicking of the IV-intern’s shoes grew fainter behind them, eventually fading away. A minute or so of silence followed, broken only by the girl’s quiet panting and his own long, sedated-deep breaths.

They’d barely reached the door to the maintenance stairwell when an intercom snapped to life above them, blaring from speakers in the ceiling. The girl flinched.

“ _Code grey_ ,” droned a sedate-sounding voice. “ _Subsection G, floor 14, ward W. Code grey_.”

He swiped his keycard, a bolt of fear shooting through him.

The LED on the locking mechanism flickered red this time. When he tried the doorhandle, it didn’t budge. He swiped the card again. Still red. Was the floor on lockdown?

As if in answer, he heard the familiar tromping of steel-toe boots behind them.

Frantically, he jiggled the doorhandle, his trembling fingers struggling to grip the keycard.  The red light taunted them with every attempt. They were locked in. The boots neared them, closer and closer. He thought he heard them round a corner. The girl seemed to sense his panic, and whimpered quietly, her wide eyes fixed on the still empty corridor behind them.

One final swipe, and the keycard slipped from his pointed fingertips. Desperate, he took a few steps back, braced himself, and charged the door, throwing the bulk of his bodyweight into his shoulder. Miraculously, it seemed to give way; he felt screws snap and restraints buckle. When he stood back, he saw that he’d left a sizeable dent in what looked to be thick steel.

A squeak of terror from the girl. He glanced back — he could see them now, burly men in black gear with rifles at their hips. He threw himself into the door again, skeletal feet grating into the floor, and he felt something crackle up through his spine, that same, euphoric energy rushing through him. The door’s hinges snapped as soon as he made contact, the thick metal collapsing backwards with a clang. He staggered forward, catching himself, and scooped up the girl, effortlessly lifting her as she hugged his arm.

Shouts behind him, the stiff, authoritative barks of soldiers. He leapt forward into the stairwell, racing down the first flight of stairs as gunshots rang out above him. The girl howled with horror, and he ducked down instinctively. His first thought was of utter revulsion, disgust,  _hatred_  — until their own twisted reality sank in again. The Patriots made him a monster.  _Of course_  they’d shoot a child.

Behind the whitewashed gleaming exterior, the hospital looked eerily utilitarian; the walls in the tiny corridor were unpainted, the floors marked with sprayed-on yellow lettering. He nearly lost balance as he ran, spindly feet struggling to stay perched on the steps, and one of his hands reflexively gripped the handrail, the girl teetering atop his shoulder. Only when they’d managed to descend a few flights did he realize — he had lived in room 1418. Implying that they were  _14_ _stories_  above ground level.

The floors flew by faster than he’d hoped. They were about 10 stories down when the Patriot troops started to catch up with them. As he rounded the corner of the stairwell, skidding on the oil-stained asphalt, the door leading back inside the complex was flung open, and a small squad of men poured out behind him. He outran them in a fraction of a second — they seemed clunky and lethargic in comparison, a distant part of him thought — and sped down the next flight, taking the stairs three at a time. The little girl buried her face into the side of his neck, petrified.

When they reached the second-to-last floor, they were greeted by laser sights.

The troopers had just barely beaten them there, the door leading back into the complex still open, swinging behind them. Unthinkingly, he kept running, a seething, mortal determination in his eyes. The men, visibly unnerved, backed up against the stairwell, and when he reached them — was he moving too quickly for them to take a shot? — he lunged forward, clawing his hands. He’d only been hoping to shove the men blocking his path into the walls, but when his curled fingers made contact, when he could feel body armor beneath his palm, he watched his new muscles jolt, felt some resistance suddenly give. One of the guards crumpled forward, the plate of kevlar on his chest suddenly buckling where Jack had pushed against it. Another man screamed, dropping his rifle to clutch his arm. It had been snapped backwards by the force of Jack’s grasp, and his shoulder was twisted grotesquely, a bulge of bone poking up through the fabric of his uniform. Jack’s clawed fingertips had scored four angry wounds into the side of his bicep, and the blood began to seep through his hand, all the color draining from his face.

Jack kept running. Three floors. Two floors. One. His hand dripped crimson now; thank God the girl hadn’t been looking. Her arms were locked around his neck now, her legs hooked under his armpit. Were all children her age so tiny?

When he reached the ground floor, he wasted no time in breaking the door down. One decent waist-high kick was enough to send it rattling from its hinges, the metal warping under the force of the blow. He stepped through the doorway, and out into what was apparently some kind of massive hangar, rows of large, tarp-draped contraptions occupying most of the space. Their outlines were faintly visible under the drapes, and they stood roughly twice his height, two spindly, footlike appendages appearing to hold them upright. It was hard not to be curious.

Madnar was waiting in front of the hangar’s collapsible front wall, and furiously waved them on as they approached, a bulky backpack slung over his shoulder. He clutched the handle of an industrial pallet truck, which was loaded with several refrigerator-sized metal trunks and one smaller, black plastic box.

“What happened?” he hissed, eyes bloodshot behind his glasses. “The alarm—”

He stopped short as the girl poked her head up, cautious and twitchy like a meerkat. The two made eye contact for a brief moment, the man effectively stunned into silence. Jack offered him a vaguely apologetic — yet distinctly unrepentant — stare. Like a child asking if he could keep his newfound pet. The girl looked decidedly fearful, and fixed her eyes on the floor, her arms still gripping him like a vice..

“Nevermind,” the doctor finished, stumbling on himself. He gestured to the pallet truck, offering Jack the handle. “Take this and follow me.”

He gaped, initially — the freight atop the truck looked to weigh several tons, at least — but, to his already waning surprise, he could get it to roll with only a modest tug. Careful not to needlessly disturb the girl, he scuttled after his companion, cargo in tow.

A few yards away was a set of double doors, emblazoned with warnings and yellow caution-stripes. A buzzer sounded the moment Madnar opened one, and a fierce, blinding beam of sunlight shone through, enough to illuminate half the hangar. The doctor stepped outside, shielding his eyes, and beckoned to Jack, one foot holding the door for him. He pried open the other door, braced himself, and wheeled the pallet truck through, his own eyes stinging as they tried to adjust. The hearty scent of baked earth washed over him. A subtle breeze wicked the sweat from his brow. He heard the girl gasp.

They’d done it.


	8. Chapter 8

It was tempting to just stand there for a few minutes. He’d grown so used to that permanent miasma of chemical­-smell that he’d forgotten what real  _air_ tasted like. And sunlight, God ­­ sunlight. He could only feel it on his cheeks, but he didn’t care; it smothered his skin like a warm blanket on an endlessly long, cold night. He wanted to bathe in it, greedily, and drink it all in, a glutton of vitamin D. His senses lit up, everything gloriously, naturally bright and vivid. He hadn’t felt truly deprived until now, when faced with what had been taken from him.

A sharp “Hurry!” from Madnar snapped him out of his trance.

The wide asphalt road on which they stood stretched infinitely into the distance, cutting across the barren landscape like a gash. When the man turned his back on Jack, he broke into a run, his lab coat flapping behind him. Jack followed suit, the pallet truck’s wheels creaking behind him, the little girl still squeezed around his shoulder.

He had to remember they were still being pursued. In that brief reprieve, he had almost forgotten. Even if they died now, they would’ve stolen some tiny, insignificant victory from the Patriots ­­ but that, as much as anything, was why they  _had_ to make it. He was starting to believe it was possible, if they’d gotten this far.

As he crested the first hill, several hundred feet from the hangar, he heard a thunderous groan behind him, and the dull, reverberating thud of shifting metal. Madnar whirled around mid­step, ghost-­white.

“Oh, God,” he breathed. His eyes, dead with fatigue, fixed on something in the near­-distance behind them.

Another series of thudding sounds, followed by low, droning groans. Jack froze, a fresh haze of fear settling over him. He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to look. As though staring down whatever was clunking towards them ­­ were those noises animal or machine? ­­ would, in itself, kill them.

Steeling himself, he threw a brief, backwards glance over his shoulder, before bolting forward, his alien feet clawing against the asphalt.  The things pursuing him looked even less human than he did. Bipedal and huge, they lumbered forward on sleek, faintly glistening legs. Heavy machine gun turrets had been bolted to their boxy, tank-like bodies, and what appeared to be arrays of sensors swung around in front of them, like the eyes of hunting predators searching for their next meal.  They moved in a formation so calculated it almost seemed random – one scouted, the others followed, and the scout fell back, to be replaced by another unit. They bleated and moaned to one another – not in any kind of identifiable pattern, so it was hard for Jack to tell if they were communicating, but everything about them seemed so anthropomorphic it wasn’t hard to just assume they were.

That quick glance had offered him a look at their appearance and behavior, but little more. Were they tanks? Vehicles of somekind? There didn’t seem to be space for a human pilot – so, then, were they UAV’s? Some experimental smart-weapon design hidden from the public eye? Or, God forbid, something in between? Something like  _him_?

It didn’t make much difference, he realized, as he heard them give a fresh chorus of groans. They were gaining. And he didn’t need a close look at those guns to know they were probably capable of ripping right through a scientist and a pre-schooler. He veered off the road, stumbling briefly on the dusty gravel beside it, and ran, willing his new legs to pump faster, harder. Brush and twigs snapped effortlessly underfoot, the weight of his new body evidently much heavier than it felt, and the pallet truck’s wheels sped over the broken terrain, leaving thick tracks. Behind him, Madnar exclaimed something, his human strides tiny by comparison. The older man would have to keep up.

He didn’t look back until he’d sprinted for what felt like several minutes, the little girl using his momentum to occasionally readjust herself on his shoulder. He could still hear the doctor’s huffing breaths, and, further back, the lowing of the tank-things, but they must’ve made it half a mile from the main compound by now, and most of that, off-road. They were safe, so far as they kept to ground that only human (or, well, human-like) ankles could traverse.  

But Madnar showed no sign of slowing down. If anything, he ran more frantically now, his cheeks pink, sweat lining his brow. What was it, he wondered, that had terrified him so? Couldn’t he stop to catch his breath, now that they had a comfortable lead on their pursuers?

He was just about to stop and rest – for Madnar’s sake, if not his own – when he felt a sudden  _snap_ behind him. He whirled around. The pallet truck’s front wheel had jammed and popped loose, after being caught on a large rock, and the axel had shattered under the weight of the cargo. He gave it a sharp tug, to little effect, then pulled with as much strength as he could consciously muster. It obstinately skidded in the dirt, the plastic wheel housing grinding away. Useless.

Another noise from one of the tank-things, but this time much closer – much closer than it should be. He followed the sound with his eyes, yanking harder still on the pallet truck. To his horror, he saw one of them crest a hill a few hundred feet away, plainly ignoring the boundaries of the paved road. The toelike appendages attached to its feet easily gripped the rocks and shrubs it trampled. They were much more mobile than he’d thought. Shit, no wonder Madnar had barely stopped to breathe. He must’ve recognized them.

The doctor had outrun him by now, and was waving him on, half-perched on a broken boulder. “What are you waiting for?”

As if in reply, Jack gave a last, furious pull on the pallet truck, only to break the rear wheels off as well.  The girl squeaked, clinging to him with newfound strength, as the cries of the tank-things drew closer. He scooped her up in his palm, dislodged her as gently as he could manage, and slid her up onto the back of his neck, so that she straddled him like a hobby-horse. It  _hurt_  – she didn’t weigh much at all, but God, that part of him still hurt – but he kept his breaths even, her tiny hands clawing into his patchy scalp. He stooped, picked up the cargo trunks from atop the pallet truck, and, shoulders jolting, lifted them to his chest. His whole upper body heaved as that energy crackled through him, but he held firm, and in a moment, after his arms had seemed to adjust, the trunks felt nearly weightless. The small black box he’d piled atop the others threatened to teeter out of his reach, but he managed to angle himself under it, keeping it from tumbling down.

It had never occurred to him, throughout the last – it couldn’t have been more than 45 minutes! – of his life, he had no idea what exactly the cargo boxes contained. Merely that Madnar had deemed them essential enough to take – and the man was smart enough to know survival would be easiest if they brought only necessities. It was a lot of trust to place in him, but hell, an insider like him was better equipped to survive their escape than Jack was. He could only pray the crates held nothing fragile.

A thundering crash to his left, loud enough to make the little girl squeal. He staggered, knocked off-balance, and craned his neck, trying to get a better look. One of the tank-things had landed beside him – had it leapt over to him, from  _that_ far away? – its massive, muscular legs coiled under it. It howled, those machine guns training their sights on him, and he darted forward, the trunks slipping from his grasp. They rolled out of his arms, still latched, as the tank-thing fired a few rounds at him. He flattened himself, dropping into the dirt. The girl gasped when they hit the ground, her knees scuffing against the sides of his neck.

It had to be an AI, and a crude one at that – no human would’ve missed him at such close range.

He lay perfectly still for a full second or so, listening for any changes in the girl’s terror-stricken breaths. Nothing too choppy — safe to assume she hadn’t been hit, either. His eyes flickered back up, the mechanical monster looming over them.  Its head swiveled, like a beast unable to find the corpse of its fallen prey. Thinking.

It was easy to feel doomed. It was second-nature. That sense of impending death had overtaken him so many times in these last few months, it no longer had the same rare, all-paralyzing sting. But what came with it now, what was different this time, was a sort of desperate indignation, the valiant struggles of an animal hopelessly snared. With every urge to give up and proffer himself up for his pursuers, there was another, doubly powerful urge to fight, to kick and squirm in whatever final acts of rebellion he could manage.

He rose, the girl teetering on his neck, and darted forward.

Straight for the droning monster before him.

It let out a cry (of surprise, he thought) when he stood, its body angling downward as it tried to train its guns on him. He sprinted between its trunk-like legs, and it ducked down its head, following him. He kept running, not pausing to look back. The tank-thing’s thighs bulged in his peripheral vision. The little girl’s panting felt hot against his temple. A creak from above. He sprang forward, the boxy head still following him, the machine doubled-over on itself. Then, all at once, it lost balance, and rolled forward, somersaulting onto its back. The ensuing crash kicked up a heavy plume of dust.

He turned back at last. The tank-thing had skidded to a halt several feet behind him, and its spindly toes pawed helplessly at the air, searching for traction. It didn’t seem able to get up. At least, not quickly.

He circled back, running as fast as his powerful new frame would carry him, and scooped up the cargo boxes, the small, black cubic one sliding around atop the rest. The other tank-things couldn’t be too far behind, and he’d seen how suddenly they approached. His chest unmoving but his breaths deep and heavy, he sprinted towards Madnar’s far-off silhouette. The only human figure in sight. The girl was latched to his neck like a lamprey. It was miraculous that she’d managed to hold on.

Only as he ran did he begin to wonder what had just tried to kill him. He had acclimated to a life without questions, without explanations. Without articulated thought, even. Only self-evident reality.  

Those mooing cries echoed behind him.

—-

He found that he never tired. Each pump of his white-muscled thighs was as strong as the one before it. Mechanical in precision. He wondered why it surprised him. And so they ran, aimless and hungry like freshly-loosed animals. They paused only when Madnar’s frail body refused to keep up — and then, only for ten minutes at most. Staying off the roads had somewhat helped to dissuage the sedans patrolling the area, but the air was abuzz with the hacking of helicopter blades, and the roar of diesel Jeep engines was never quite out of earshot.

When night fell, the sky blazed with spotlights. He felt mortally exposed, even in the cover of darkness; the shrubs that grazed his ankles did little for camouflage. But they trudged on, Madnar leading them, deeper into the lifeless rocky abyss. Every so often, he produced a small, battery-operated GPS unit from his backpack, pinged it, and adjusted their course; where they were headed, exactly, Jack could care less, but it was somewhat comforting to know the doctor had some kind of destination in mind. He knew it was optimistic to think they might reach civilization, considering the apparent remoteness of the Patriots’ base, but the gentle, cool breeze that caressed his skin was more than enough to keep him moving.

Darkness, too, was something new, something forgotten. He was so used to the endless glare of fluorescents, even in his fitful sleep. He still disliked it, and the still very loud, very abrasive memories it begged, but he’d seen plenty of horrible things in the past few months. Lighting didn’t make much difference.

As twilight wore on, he felt the little girl go limp against his neck, her breaths stretching into snores. Madnar offered to shoulder her, rather than risk her being dropped; he was tall enough now that a fall from the height of his shoulder might injure a tiny thing like her.  But soon Madnar was drooping too. His footsteps grew languid as the hours passed, his face visibly creased with weariness. Jack realized abruptly that he had no idea how old the man was — early 60’s, at least.

They trekked on through the night, until the first glimmer of dawn crested over the dunes. The girl remained firmly unconscious, curled limply in the doctor’s arms like a tiny corpse. The whirr of the helicopters was fainter now, somehow, and it had been hours since they’d seen any sign of a marauding Jeep. Jack ran his silver tongue over his upper lip, the skin chapped. He’d been without an IV for a while now, and he could feel his body growing vaguely warmer, like the first vestiges of a fever. But conspicuously absent was the slick, greasy feeling of dried sweat on his skin. No sweat. That figured.

After they’d spent nearly the entire night in silence, Madnar spoke suddenly, in the disjointed, fragmented speech of the sleepless.

“We have made it further than I thought possible.” A pause, as he adjusted his backpack, sliding it forward onto one bony shoulder. “The girl was an inpatient too, I assume.”

A nod, his gaze resting on her. Settling on the thin plastic bracelet still wound around her wrist.

“She did not escape on her own, did she?” No, of course not. But the doctor knew that. He hardly hesitated. “Or rather, do you recall what room you found her in?”

Madnar glanced up at him expectantly, and he hesitated, thinking. It hadn’t even been half a day, and already those first panicked moments, once so clearly etched into his mind, had gradually started to fade. His eyes narrowed as he tried to picture the door, as sterile-white and homogenous as the others.

He held up one finger, then four, then six, then seven.

“Ah,” his companion replied, his expression darkening with solemn comprehension.

Jack stopped short. He adopted what he could only hope was a desperately questioning countenance, sorrow creeping over him. Oh, God. He should’ve known it was bad. She looked healthy enough, if very thin, but why had he assumed? Why had he assumed  _anything_?

“Walk,” Madnar muttered, frowning, “and I explain.”

A nod, and he resumed his unnaturally quick-lumbering pace. The doctor kept one eye on the girl as he spoke, as if worried she might wake up and hear him, and cleared his throat, a fresh gust of wind threatening to buff them.

“Dr. Hudson — the other doctor you saw frequently, my colleague — is a physician of unmatched talent. But it was no secret that his true fascination was not in surgery, but in behavioral psychology. After years of faithful service, and approval from, ah—”

It was as if he’d choked on the words. Jack bobbed his head, encouraging him to go on. Saying their name aloud still felt strange; it was the public recognition of something that did not exist.

“—he began to work on special projects outside his specialty. Some of the rooms on your floor were being used for his studies. He used children, primarily, as they were unlikely to have suffered any prior psychiatric trauma, and would therefore produce the most scientifically valid results.”

He sighed. The girl stirred in her sleep, but showed no sign of waking. “Room 1467 was a study in the effects of extreme social isolation. From the time she could walk, this child was locked alone in a room, only to be visited in case of severe illness or emergency. Her meals and changes of clothing were delivered through a slot in one of the walls, and she was filmed 24 hours a day. Her only link to the outside room was an old computer with an internet connection — highly monitored, of course.”

The wind had picked up again, swirling the dust underfoot. Madnar grew more and more melancholy as he went on, pausing every so often to cough. “As ludicrous as it sounds, I wonder if she did not discover a way around our firewall. Hudson mentioned 1467 was vastly intelligent, and would make for an especially interesting subject.” He attempted to clean his glasses as he finished, limboing so as to avoid losing his grip on her. “It is too terrible to think that this girl has never held a real conversation.”

How he longed to rebuke that. He inhaled sharply, as if to reply, before letting his breath leave him through grit metallic teeth. Rage seethed in him, boiled under skin he no longer had. He gripped the cargo boxes tighter, slightly crumpling one of the edges. Demons, they were. Demons and sadists in lab coats. It was one thing for him to suffer alone. To get what he’d known was coming to him. But this Hudson — no, this sprawling, all-powerful entity, the faceless five-syllable  _thing_ that ruined his life — tortured a helpless child. One of many, the way Madnar talked about it. But why? What could she have possibly done to them? If this nightmare was his punishment, what the hell did she have to atone for?

The other man spoke, snapping him out of his thoughts. He’d been unresponsive for a long time, evidently.

“May I ask you something,  _metallicheskiy drug_?”

A slow nod. Of course.

“I have been trying to figure out if there is a method to their madness. Why they choose the subjects they do. All we were told is that you — the subjects, I mean — were violent war criminals, and would try to assault us and escape if given the chance.” He glanced over at Jack, his vein-dotted eyes skirting over that twisted, bulging off-white frame. “We never learned your names, your ages — anything about you, aside from all the biometric data they’d compiled for us. But there  _was_  a lot of that. ”

Another brief spasm of coughing, as he collected his thoughts. “They lied to us so often, about so many things, I am not sure what to believe. I do not doubt they would try to make us feel less guilty about it. That perhaps if we thought we were killing murderers, we would not mind it so much. Those of us who minded, at least. So I wonder. Do you have any idea why you wound up in that operating room?”

At first, the answer was obvious. Yes. Of course they wanted him. He had something of theirs, installed in his brain and pulsing through his veins. And his continued existence was a personal affront to them. In those hazy, self-injurious days after Big Shell, he had been beyond their immediate control, and that, as much as anything he might’ve done for Big Mama, was enough to make him a threat. So naturally, they sought to erase him. This was all self-evident, something to be taken for granted.

But why  _this_. Why the costly surgeries, the intricate tests, the careful supervision.  _Why_ , when they could’ve shot him with a high-powered rifle from miles away and left his body in a ditch. That was a different question altogether, one he hadn’t had much time to ponder. When had the nightmare started? He’d been working with the assumption that the amnesty workers who’d ‘rescued’ him had been Patriots, and that’s where the chain of custody began, but now — who could know what went on behind Solidus’ back, during those long lapses of time where his memories failed him?

But slowly, he nodded an affirmative.

“And — were we told the truth?” Those bespectacled eyes met his again, briefly. “Are you a criminal?”

Another nod, sorrow registering in his sagging eyelids, in the line of his brow, in the sutured corners of his lips.

“I see.” The doctor was silent for a few long beats, as if mulling it over. “And you are someone who has had a difficult life, yes?”

Yes, yes. God, yes.

“Do you know why I was so intent on helping you? Why I risked everything?” Said in such a deadpan tone, Jack wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard correctly. He shook his head. No, he realized — he had no idea why Madnar was helping him. Out of sheer desperation, he’d assumed, but — surely it would’ve been easier, by this point, to abandon him?

“You were unusual from the beginning. When you were wheeled into the operating suite, you were still mostly conscious. We had to administer extra sedation to keep you still. And, once the operation began — you never lost consciousness. Not once. Even after your blood had been replaced. Even after your jaw had been bifurcated, and your cervical vertebrae had been stripped away. Even when you were just a head, disconnected from a body — you stayed wide awake, those bright blue eyes staring back up at me. None of the others had done that; they had all fainted at some point or another, usually when the blood transfusions began. But you did not. The expression you wore… You had a look of pathological determination.”

The little girl began to stir in Madnar’s arms, and glanced down at her, lowering his tone. “I am a man of science, you know. I do not believe in what cannot be proven. And yet, none of the others survived, and you did. It is as if they had simply relinquished the will to live — and you clung to it, unwilling to die.

“I did not choose this life, either. After my work on the Metal Gear prototypes, I was disgusted with myself, with the military-industrial complex, and with the scientific community at large. I am a criminal, too, and I regret every moment. I wanted to use cybernetics to help people — if I could make a tank walk, why not a paraplegic? But  _they_  — the  _la-li-lu-le-lo_  — they found my daughter, who had been in hiding back in Russia. They found her, and they used her as leverage.”

His voice broke, trembling softly as  he went on. The girl had evidently drifted off again, and lay limp in his arms. “What could I do? What could I do, but assist them in these travesties? For years I worked for them, performing unspeakable procedures like yours — until one day I realized, I could go on no longer. If they had Ellen, they would kill her eventually, no matter what I did — and knowing them, and their unending cruelty, there was a good chance she was dead already. And I could not do it. I could not keep making men into monsters.”

He stopped dead, the wind kicking a fresh gust of sand against his ankles. Jack turned to face him, wishing to feel something. Anger. Disgust. Anything, really. Anything but a strange, unsettling sort of empathy. The same cocktail of sickening emotion he’d felt when he watched his father fall. It must’ve showed; he watched Madnar’s facial expression crumple in response. He looked as if he was nearly in tears.

“If we survive, I will do whatever I can to help you,  _metallicheskiy drug_. Those crates — they contain the rest of your body, the armored portions I could not wait to install. I… I will spend the rest of my life undoing what I have done to you. And while I cannot hope for your forgiveness, I can seek to atone for my sins.”

As he finished, they crested a large dune, revealing the arid desert basin below. Choppers whirred in the far-off distance, their spotlights staring down in the darkness like cyclops’ eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

They kept running through the long night, past spotlights and the far-off roars of the bipedal tanks, and, like a just-broken fever, when morning came, the worst of the danger seemed to have passed. He didn’t know why they stopped searching. Perhaps they’d outrun them — but no, that seemed unlikely. Too easy. So what was it? Did they figure him dead by now? Was there something he didn’t know?

He had enough time to ponder these things as the brilliant sun rose, unfettered by clouds or tree cover. He’d forgotten how many colors the sky could glow. When the little girl finally woke, still curled up in the doctor’s arms, she stared, slack-jawed and bug-eyed, until the brightness forced her to squint. Her first sunrise  _ever_ , if Madnar’s story could be believed. And Jack could certainly buy it.

The three of them didn’t communicate often. Every few hours, the doctor would pause to fish a bottle of water or a granola bar from his bag, and offer the provisions to the girl, but beyond that they simply walked in placid silence. Jack found his mind wandering again. His gaze drank in the amoebic outlines of the cacti, the dull rainbow of browns and reds of the gravel underfoot, the occasional sighting of a set of animal tracks. Before long, he could go hours without spotting any trace of the Patriots.

He stopped for a quick rest in the late afternoon, the heat wearing his companions thin. Though hedidn’t feel the slightest trace of physical fatigue — he was starting to see now why Madnar had been so excited to attach his muscles —  he was glad to drop his cargo and regain the use of his hands. The sutures along his head had started to itch. When he reached up to scratch his scars — gingerly, lest he cut himself with his own, claw-like fingertips — he was taken aback. A thin, uneven fuzz of hair had sprouted on his pieced-together scalp. What remained of his brow furrowed in thought, as Madnar and the girl sat cross-legged in the dirt.

He was growing hair. His body was  _growing_. Trying to repair itself. Did this mean he wasn’t  _actually_ dying? That he could really  _live_ like this? Strange, he thought, as he sat down to join them, casting a brief, wary glance down at his own metallic palms. Strange how he’d taken that for granted, and yet, had never thought twice about trying to escape. That not trying would’ve been wasting something precious, no matter how hopeless their survival was. He was dragged onward by that indelible will to live, that need to fight for every second, that his childhood home had seared into him.

For the first time in months, he thought of the future. Of returning to his dingy apartment, long-since abandoned. Of reporting back to Big Mama. Of wearing t-shirts and jeans and going grocery shopping in public. Of  _needing groceries_. Of waking up in the morning to that same skeletal, mutilated face. The best-case scenario that he’d never bothered to consider.

Sufficiently horrified, he sought distraction.

The little girl had taken to staring at him again, between bites of granola. Something occurred to him.

“ _W-H-A-T I-S YOUR N-A-M-E?_ ” he signed, attempting to force a friendly expression. To his surprise, she answered him aloud.

“S-S-So-ne… S-Sone… Sone-ne-ne…” She scowled, one tiny hand curling into a fist, before she held out her wrist to him, displaying her ID bracelet. “H-H-Hard for me to s-s-s-say.”

He leaned forward, peering at the text, and tilted his head until the sun stopped reflecting off the laminated plastic. What he read made him gasp, albeit noiselessly, and he squinted, reading and re-reading just to be sure.

_Gurlukovich, Sonechka E._

It was impossible, wasn’t it? The odds were far too slim. But, as she sat there, staring at him with that endearingly expectant look, he couldn’t help but notice the resemblance. That whitish-blonde hair. Those sharp, angular cheekbones and high-arched nose. He blinked, trying to process it all. Gurlukovich wasn’t exactly a common name, either. It had to be her.

She was the girl he’d promised to save. Sitting there, relatively unharmed, right in front of him.

He was glad, in that instant, that his new face was so inexpressive (or, perhaps, that she was so inexperienced at reading them). He allowed himself to boggle for a moment, marveling at the sheer unthinkability of it all, before he composed himself, his features relaxing into their usual, stiff contours.

The rare sound of the girl’s mewling stutter caught Madnar’s attention, and he, too, was visibly alarmed by the brandishing of her bracelet. He grabbed her wrist, twisted the plastic until it tore, and heaved it over one shoulder, his thick eyebrows raised. Sonechka, startled by the sudden contact, curled up again, pressing her knees to her chest. The doctor offered her a brief, consolatory glance.

“We cannot take any chances,” he murmured, more to Jack than to the girl. “I have ensured that you and I are free of tracking devices, but I cannot account for her.” He began to gather up his supplies, gesturing to the others that it was time to go. “It is unlikely, considering we have gotten this far, but either way, we should keep moving.”

Jack offered a solemn nod in reply, and gathered up the cargo containers, heaving them up to his chest with a jerk of his shoulders. In the corner of his eye, he saw the little girl stumbling inelegantly to her feet, her now disheveled-looking hospital gown fluttering in the gentle breeze. Noon approached, with its heat, as the vast zeroscape stretched into infinity before them. 

* * *

 

Hours dribbled by. Madnar trekked in front, leading them on into apparent nothingness like a holy shepherd. Sonechka lagged behind, sweat plastering her stray wisps of hair to her tiny forehead. Jack brought up the rear, his alien feet leaving hoof-like prints in the dust. They were utterly alone now.

It came on gradually, like a creeping shadow. A sluggishness in his limbs. A heaviness in his eyelids. The sun bore down mercilessly, each wave of heat more oppressive than the last. He stumbled — once, then several times in quick succession, until each stride was effortful. His feet dragged, drawing gashes in the dusty earth beneath him. He could feel himself start to sway as Madnar began to outpace him, and he squinted, his posture drooping under the weight of the crates. Air seemed to escape him, and his usual deep breaths grew shallow, hectic. But he was still silent, of course; the others only noticed his failing strength when he sank to his knees.

Madnar expressed his concern with that telltale physician’s frown, but Jack forced himself back up, ankles wobbling. They continued on in silence for a few more miles, as he felt the sickness rise in him. A powerful, sinking nausea. His head began to reel, his thoughts fragmented, distracted. Pain was bearable, but illness had a way of sapping his focus. Step, step. He just had to keep walking. Nothing more. The crates grew heavier in his arms. He lurched, closing his eyes.

He had to keep walking, or he would die. He clung to that thought, as all others grew blurry and distant. He’d made it so far.

He didn’t realize he’d fainted until he awoke, dirt dusting his nostrils, with the cargo crates splayed out in front of him. As the arid world began to refocus around him, he felt Madnar’s wrinkled hands paw at his forehead. He tilted his jaw to the side, panting audibly, as he stared up at his companions, little Sonechka nervously fisting her hands in the frayed edge of her gown.

“It is setting in very quickly,” the doctor mumbled, palm pressing lightly against what remained of Jack’s cheek. “I would have assumed you would have several days, at the least, but perhaps all the heavy lifting you have done has worsened things. And the heat.”

Jack tried to fix his gaze on Madnar’s thick frames, even as that sickening headache began to return. He shot him the most questioning expression he could muster, one hand pawing limply at the ground beneath. He was too dizzy to stand.

The doctor obliged him, kneeling down to be closer to his eye level. “Your blood — it is white, not red. Do you know why?”

A very strained, subtle shake of his head in reply.

“That is because it is not really blood, in the strictest sense. It is a blood replacement fluid which we have modified. It has no red cells, no haemoglobin. It simply carries oxygen and trace elements directly to your organic parts.” As he spoke, he tugged up at Jack’s chest, encouraging him to sit up. He obliged, even as his head spun. It was hard to understand Madnar with a clear head, let alone  _now_ , in this heat. 

The doctor continued. “But you do not have kidneys, and you do not respire in the normal sense. Your body has no way of removing the waste it collects from your cells, so that waste builds up in your blood, poisoning you. To survive, you need constant dialysis. That was simple enough to provide when you were bedridden, but now…” He frowned softly, reaching over to pat Jack’s head. “Forgive me. The portable dialysis unit I brought with us cannot function without a power supply, and I thought your strength might hold out a little longer.”

Jack could respond with little more than a pained, elongated blink. His jaw hung open an inch, like a panting dog, and he tried again to stand, his body only barely supporting him. Madnar jumped up to steady him, grabbing his shoulder, but Jack shrugged him off, shooting him a droopy-lidded glance.

He could die here, now, in the desert, or he could keep walking, endlessly marching towards uncertain, distant coordinates. What could he do but carry on? What choice was there? Even with a clouded mind, and even as the solid ground rolled like a tide beneath his feet, he could understand that much. So he was dying. At this point, what difference did it make? As long as he could manage to stay conscious, why not keep going?

The doctor gaped as Jack reached for the cargo containers. Gaped, but did nothing to stop him. He understood. Wordlessly, he beckoned Sonechka along, one eye fixed on Jack’s hunched, looming silhouette.

* * *

 

When the sun set, he allowed himself to collapse again, the pounding in his head overtaking him. As soon as he fell to his hands and knees, he began to dry-heave violently, until the whiplash of each lurch robbed him of what little sense of balance he’d managed to retain. He rolled onto his back, a few droplets of drool slicking his metallic jaw, and curled up, the dust matting his patches of hair.

Maybe he’d overestimated himself. Maybe this wasn’t a matter of willpower. Maybe death would take him kicking and screaming. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall flat against the dirt. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, all non-vital thoughts drowned out by each frantic, effortful breath. He didn’t know if he could keep fighting the inevitable. Every pore ached. Was this worth it?

When he opened his eyes again, the doctor and the girl were beside him, Madnar reaching down to prop up his neck, Sonechka hovering over him like a worried mother. After a moment or two, he felt something soft against the base of his skull; when he looked up, he saw that Madnar no longer sported his grime-spotted lab coat. He’d folded it up to use it as a pillow.

“We will rest for a few hours,” he murmured, sliding the GPS unit into his backpack. He offered Sonechka half a protein bar and the last sips from a plastic water bottle, and as the girl ate, he rummaged through his supplies. Eventually, he produced a tattered notepad and a ballpoint pen, both emblazoned with pharmaceutical logos, and slid them into Jack’s limp cybernetic hands.

“I could only find a pad with a couple of pages,” the doctor said, offering his companion an empathetic smile. “So use them wisely. There is still enough sunlight to write by, if you would like to.”

Another gift. But so different from Hudson’s. The gift of speech. He blinked in reply, fingers curling around the pen. The lines of the paper slipped in and out of focus, and he strained to sit up, but it was well worth the agony.

Had he been free of that mental fog, fully in control of his faculties, he might have picked a more profound message. But in that moment, his head reeling and lungs gasping, he knew exactly what he wanted to write. A thought that had been humming in the back of his mind for miles, one that somehow didn’t escape him when the sickness came on.  He straightened the paper as best he could, his claw-tipped fingers struggling to grip the thin pen, and scrawled, in a preschoooler’s all-caps penmanship:

_YOU CAN’T SAY YOUR NAME? YOU SHOULD GET A NICKNAME SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY THE HARD PART._

He tapped the notepad with his finger, to get her attention, and beckoned the little girl over. To his surprise, she read his scribbles with ease; she didn’t even drag her pointer finger under each word as she read, like he had done as a boy. He wondered if the stutter was the only thing slowing her down.

“Wh-wh-what k-k-kind of n-n-nuh-nick-n-name?”

He met her eyes, attempting what he hoped would pass for a smile, before writing again. Each stroke took agonizingly long, as if he were attempting some excessively intricate form of calligraphy. Madnar watched him work over his shoulder, the girl pressed up beside him.

_WHAT IF YOU SHORTENED IT? SOMETHING LIKE “SUNNY”_

“ _Suh-nee?_ ” The girl squinted, as if wondering if she’d read correctly. Jack nodded.

A moment passed. He waited.

“Sunny,” she repeated. “Sunny.” The realization was slow to dawn on her.

No stutter. When it sank in, her smile stretched her thin cheeks so widely, she looked like she was going to tear them. “Sunny!” she squealed, as shrilly as her meek voice would allow.  _“Sunny! Sunny!”_ She grabbed Jack’s arm, nearly bouncing with excitement, and beamed at him. Even Madnar’s worn-through expression warmed. 

* * *

 

Within a few hours, the last streaks of desert sunset had faded away. Jack had long since given up any hope of further travel that night. Sonechka — “Sunny” — had gone to sleep as abruptly as any small child, and lay curled up against him, her tiny hand clutching at a vent-like portion of his chest. Madnar wordlessly munched granola and stared up at the stars, the crumbs catching in his two-day beard. Jack wondered if he was searching for constellations, or trying to navigate. Or just staring.

He was aware that he’d slipped in and out of consciousness, but he didn’t try to fight it. He was exhausted. And nothing else could dull the throbbing in his skull. It was as though invisible ropes bound him to the ground; his every movement required excruciating effort. It was after the third time he woke — always with a bit of a start — that he heard the doctor’s rasping voice again. A moment later he felt a rough hand in his frayed hair.

“Your pain is almost over,  _metallicheskiy drug_. One way or another, it will all be over soon.”

* * *

 

Movement. The ground beneath him, dust and pebbles grinding under his weight. The navy-blue pre-dawn sky. His fingers struggling to grip the cargo containers, the small, black box he’d balanced atop them skidding with each step. Frigid air on his cheeks. Threads of drool hanging from his slackened jaw. The faint shadow of his companions, walking in unison, always a few steps ahead of him. He trudged on, as if treading water. As if trying to wade across an ocean.

He saw lights. Heard grumbling, metallic noises. Felt the artificial flatness of asphalt underfoot. Some large, dark shape to his left. A softness draping over his skeletal shoulders. White fabric. Madnar’s coat? He heard voices. An unfamiliar twang in one of them. The others had stopped walking. He hesitated, blinking furiously, as if to clear the mental fog. His head seethed.

A truck. A big-rig truck had stopped for them. They were on the side of a road. How long had they been walking?

He followed Madnar’s blurry figure to the back of the truck, and saw himself slide the cargo boxes inside. The doctor mumbled something almost unintelligible, a command, and he obeyed, clamboring in and settling amongst the crates and boxes. His head lolled back on his shoulders as he watched the trailer door slide shut, drowning him in darkness. 

* * *

He could hear the ocean. Feel velvet sand caress the pads of his toes. The air was dense with salt, and the sun melted into the horizon, spraying purples and pinks across the early evening sky. The beach was empty, lifeless, the coastline stretching into infinity on his left and right, the waves crashing in front of him.

He held her hand. Silken-smooth skin against a soldier’s leathery hide. She smiled up at him, thin and pretty and serene, her dark hair let-down and tousled. He could feel that smile on his skin, a tangible warmth. She didn’t say anything. She just nodded. He understood.

They strode into the waves.

The water was warm, welcoming, and the tide seemed to quell in their wake, beckoning them closer rather than pushing them away. They waded in to their knees, hips, chests, shoulders. He felt as though they were dissolving, all the pain and hatred and terror diluted into nothingness. They kept going. Water poured into his ears, up his nostrils, past his smiling lips. He embraced her, the bubbles trickling more slowly from him, his whole body submerged. Her lithe arms hugged him close.

They sank together, deeper and deeper, and he let his lungs fill, let himself be overwhelmed by the tranquil waters. As the light of the surface faded away, he surrendered himself, her cold body still pressed against his chest. No more pain. No more agony. Only sleep now, and the gentle, wafting tide of the ocean. He was happy. 

* * *

 

He could feel the thick crusts around his eyes before he’d finished opening them. He didn’t feel alive. 

Sunlight filtered in from a window behind him. He was splayed out on a beige carpet floor, rolled over on his left side. A bed towered before him, freshly made with dingy floral blankets. The walls were covered in peeling, yellowed wallpaper, and everything smelled of Pine-Sol. A motel room.

He tried to sit up, but felt something tug at his back. Suddenly wary, he craned his neck over her shoulder, twisting his upper body to get a better view of himself. A series of thin clear tubes fed into ports along his spine, and they carried a white liquid to a piece of equipment a few feet away. It was a small, greyish box roughly the size and shape of a desktop printer, and its elaborate control panel gave little clue as to its function. A pink logo on its side identified it as the  _Freedom™ Personal Home Hemodialyzer_. It was plugged into a nearby wall socket.

Madnar. This must have been in the smaller cargo box. He’d brought it along, knowing that Jack would grow ill in a few days’ time. He’d genuinely believed they’d make it this long. It was strangely touching thought.

He felt footsteps reverberate through the floor, the uneven bounds of a child. Moments later, the door creaked open, and a baggy t-shirt-clad Sunny tiptoed in. She peered gingerly over the side of the bed, to where he lay, and inched down towards him, nearly shrieking aloud when he made eye contact. Visibly startled — but just as visibly gleeful — she bolted back out of the room, and he thought he could hear her stifled giggles echo down the adjacent hall.

He’d only gotten the briefest of glances, but somehow, she looked healthier. More vibrant. The change of clothes had helped.

It wasn’t long before he heard heavier, slower footsteps approaching, and heard that familiar, accented mumble. The doctor seemed to punctuate each syllable with a sip of coffee.

“You are awake, I see,  _Jack_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to come.


	10. Chapter 10

There was something very surreal about watching the two of them scarf down a fast-food breakfast, perched together at the foot of the hotel bed -- Madnar perusing the front page of an obscure local paper as he sipped his coffee; Sunny pouring several packets of salt on some reconstituted scrambled eggs. Between their new civilized surroundings and what looked to be a change of freshly-bought thrift-store clothes, they looked almost eerily normal. Watching them, Jack could forget that he was no longer able to blend in so seamlessly.

“The man who drove us here was very kind,” Madnar explained, between bites of a nondescript breakfast sandwich. “I had feared the worst, when he saw you, but it seems we only confirmed his theories about alien life-forms. This is his room; he and I managed to sneak you inside without rousing the night crew’s suspicions.” A sigh, as he folded the newspaper over his lap. “And our antics have not made headlines yet.”

The doctor yawned, stretching and displaying the yellowed pit stains on his newly acquired, off-white button-down shirt. It was printed with a light tan Hawaiian pineapple print. It dwarfed him, but made him look much less like a world-class biomechanics expert on the lam. Sunny just looked like a little girl.

With a final swig of coffee, he stood and ambled over to where Jack lay, the machine still humming softly beside him. After entering a few series of keystrokes, he shut it down, and gingerly wrenched the tubing from his companion’s back. A small amount of white liquid seeped out onto the carpet. The whole process seemed disturbingly unsterile, he thought, but Madnar didn’t seem overly concerned; Jack tried not to worry.

“There is a notepad and pen on the nightstand above you,” the doctor muttered, as Jack sat up to reach for it. “If you have no next destination in mind, I suppose we could continue to follow the road, or see if our trucker friend will drive us somewhere…”

He trailed off, watching as Jack began to scribble furiously. His handwriting was only marginally less clumsy, now that he had his wits about him again, and the pen wobbled between his tapered fingertips with every stroke, but _god_ did it feel good just to _say something_.

Even if that something was simply _GET ME A PHONE._

* * *

Madnar returned a few minutes later, clutching an ancient flip phone. “I told him you were calling your queen.” 

Scoffing to himself, the doctor tossed the phone over to Jack, who was still sprawled out on the floor. It wasn’t too far from the truth, to be fair. And a low-tech phone was good, he thought; it might not even have GPS capabilities. Which would probably make them _slightly_ harder for the Patriots to pin down. It didn’t matter now, anyway. Now that they had a way of communicating with the outside world.

Jack punched in a long string of numbers, easily twice the length of any normal phone number. It had taken weeks to commit it to memory, but he’d known the Paradise Lost Army higher-ups wouldn’t give him any formal assignments until he could recite it flawlessly, on command. For situations just like this.

His fingers grew even clumsier with anticipation. His pupils were pinhole dots. This was it. His last-ditch hope. He’d never imagined they’d get this far, but now that they had, he was filled with a terrifying sort of ecstasy. Dear God, he thought, I’m going to live. We’re all going to get out of this alive.

He hit the green off-hook button.

Eerily, there was no dialtone. A recorded message played. _Please enter your passcode._

His mouth was bone-dry. Carefully, so as not to confuse any of the digits, he spelled out that horrible phrase. A password he’d picked for himself, in case of emergency. One he knew he’d never forget.

_5-2-2-5-8-4-3-7-4-7-7-3-7_

J-A-C-K-T-H-E-R-I-P-P-E-R

He hit the pound sign key when he’d finished. Now, a dialtone played. Several agonizing seconds passed. Jack glanced up; Sunny and Madnar’s gazes were fixed on him, and the doctor gnawed at his lower lip. He could see a growing look of realization in the old man’s eyes; _this_ was what the Patriots had been so afraid of.

A female voice, soft and husky, answered. “Agent Raiden?”

Shit. He realized he had no way of answering. A sudden, electrifying terror shot through him, and he leapt to his feet, passing the phone to Madnar with trembling, unresponsive hands. Madnar jammed the speakerphone button and cradled the phone against his head, stammering uselessly into the receiver. Jack gestured frantically, nodding and scrambling to scribble something with the pen and paper.

“Hello?” the doctor managed, his voice thin with panic. “I, uh. My name is Dr. Drago Madnar.”

The voice turned sharp and cold, businesslike. “Is this a ransom call?”

The color drained visibly from his face. Jack shook his head furiously, pointing to himself with the pen.

“No, no, uh--”

“If this is a ransom call, please put Agent Raiden on the line.”

“I, uh, I do not--”

“I am tracing this call, Dr. Madnar. Snipers will be dispatched to your location the moment you hang up. Please put Agent Raiden on the line.”

The sound of the ballpoint pen slamming down onto the hotel nightstand was audible from across the room. Jack brandished the notepad, and Madnar squinted to read it, his handwriting childlike and shaky.

_I am Agent Raiden_

_her name is Big Mama_

_say JD AL TR TJ GW_

Madnar cleared his throat. “Big Mama?”

The voice seemed to perk up. “Yes?” At that, Jack swayed on his feet.

“JD, AL, TR, TJ, GW.” Sweat beaded on the doctor’s forehead. He swallowed hard.

The line seemed to go dead for several seconds, and then she spoke again, more solemnly now. “I understand. I will have your coordinates when you hang up. Backup will be there within three hours.”

A stunned silence fell over them. There was a brief rustling from the phone, and then a sigh. When the woman spoke again, her voice trembled faintly. “Is he all right?”  
  
“Agent Raiden?” Madnar asked numbly.

“Yes. He should have made this call, not a proxy. Is there a reason you can’t put him on?”

The doctor hesitated, his shoulders sinking, his free hand falling limply to his side. When he’d gathered himself enough to speak, hot tears rolled down his nose. “He is alive, ma’am, only mute. But I warn you. He has seen Hell. If you knew him as a man, you may not recognize him now.”

The phone beeped as the call was terminated. Madnar slumped onto the foot of the bed, his legs visibly shaking. Wordlessly, he gaped at Jack, his tears still dribbling onto the comforter.

Jack let himself slide back down onto the floor, his back propped against the side of the bed. Sunny curled up next to him, sensing the tension but unable to understand it. They didn’t move until they heard the dull, hacking sound of a chopper outside.

* * *

 Everything moved quickly after that. The efficiency with which the Paradise Lost Army troops retrieved them would have impressed any seasoned mercenary. The locals seemed so dumbfounded by the entire operation -- it wasn’t every day a squad of fully-armored Chinooks swooped in, picked up a metal monstrosity, his two proteges and several tons of cargo, and then vanished into thin air -- that they made little attempt to interfere. In what felt like seconds, Jack watched the dusty motel shrink into the distance, Sunny clinging tightly to his arm.

Big Mama, to his surprise, had accompanied the rescue team, and radioed in from one of the other helicopters. Freshly composed, Madnar made a good faith attempt to explain Jack’s condition, but there was no use; the soldiers who sat beside him couldn’t take their eyes off of him. As far as they knew, he defied explanation.

Jack spent most of the flight back to base in a daze, suddenly too exhausted to think. He tuned out most of Big Mama and Madnar’s conversation, the whirr of the engine lulling him into a trance. One topic, though, did pique his interest.

“No, no, I do not know where it was. I was blindfolded when they first took me there. And I could not leave-- Wait. Wait. I used a GPS unit to navigate away from the facility. Yes. Yes, a GPS. It was originally attached to a bipedal drone; they use them to make sure the drones do not wander away or get lost… I-- Yes, it should have those coordinates stored. Yes. I think so. Is that information valuable to you?”

Big Mama’s laughter was so loud, he could hear it from ten feet away, through the speakers of the radio headset. She sounded drunk.


	11. Epilogue

They’d wasted no time at all in planning their next move. This was a golden opportunity, and no doubt the Patriots knew they had been irreparably compromised. Now was their chance to rub salt in the wound, and Big Mama knew it. Taking down the System was like repairing a pair of ripped nylons, she’d told him -- once you found one hole, you always found others. The metaphor was slightly lost on him, of course, but he revelled in the thought of revenge. In those intermediary weeks, it was all he could think of.

The operation was to be highly coordinated and multi-stage, closer to an invasion than a simple gun run. Big Mama spent hours interviewing Madnar in an attempt to get a more accurate feel for the building’s layout. Several companies of men, including a large number of medics, were told to start stockpiling necessary ammo and equipment. And Jack, it became clear, would be instrumental in the attack. The Paradise Lost Army had a monster on their side now, a mechanical beast of war, and they intended to use him for all he was worth.

When the day came, they strapped pack upon pack of plastic explosive to him, his fully-armored body unflinching under the weight. An adapter protruded from a port a few inches below the base of his skull, and to it Madnar had attached a heavy-duty, rubber-sheathed cable, long enough to wrap around his neck. The night before, he had uploaded a virus-laden driver to the digital storage within Jack’s body -- like “plug and play hardware”, Big Mama explained -- in collaboration with an independent anti-Patriot hacking firm. Jack’s mission was twofold: Slip inside the compound, remaining as undetected as possible, and deposit the virus somewhere in the Patriot facility’s computer network; and scatter enough explosive inside the building to cripple it upon detonation. The explosives, which the virus would arm automatically, would detonate fifteen minutes after the system went down, while most of the computers were still in the process of rebooting. If the virus worked, there would be a golden window of about ten minutes or so, during which the explosive charges would be unarmed and the building’s digital defenses would be down. The Paradise Lost troops planned to storm the facility, rescue as many prisoners as possible, and flee before the compound went up in flames.

They were to expect heavy casualties. Jack tried to steel himself. If those men were smart, they’d know when to lay down their guns; the Paradise Lost Army had given him reliable mercenary work for good pay. But he’d seen what the Patriots did to traitors.

They flew him in on another Chinook, and Big Mama came with him, constantly barking orders into her headset. The Paradise Lost forces were to remain hidden until the Patriot computer system was safely incapacitated; as fearsome as their soldiers were, Big Mama truly feared the drones. Madnar had assured them that a sophisticated virus would keep them inactivated, though; otherwise, the walking tanks were liable to rip through their forces like a bullet through tissue paper.

He leapt from the chopper to the ground, the explosives weightless on his back. When he landed, his upper body falling forward onto his outstretched palms, he could feel a crunch ripple through his spine, and heard the stabilizers on his calves click back into place. At the moment of impact, he saw a flash of brilliant static discharge itself into the dirt, his carbon nanotube muscles rippling with a massive, synchronized electrical charge. The transparent, flesh-colored insulator gel that now covered his shoulders and glutes crackled with voltage. He must have fallen at least 40 or 50 feet, he realized, and when he stood, he felt tantalizingly powerful. The baked earth fractured beneath him.

The Patriot lab was a huge, boxy building with small windows every other floor, and a warehouse-like extension off to one side. It looked very nondescript from afar, and quite old, as if its current purpose had not been its original one. He didn’t give its external appearance much thought, and simply ran towards one of the walls, hoping to gain enough momentum to scale it. The knobby texture of his feet, while disturbingly inhuman in appearance, gave him much needed traction, and he scrambled up the face of the building, his fingers managing to grip one of the window ledges. He punched through the glass and shoulder-rolled through, some of his gear nearly snagging on the way inside.

By a stroke of luck, he had entered through what looked to be a men’s restroom. He was certain some kind of silent alarm had been triggered, and he didn’t doubt the presence of hidden cameras, somewhere, but so far, no one came for him. He stripped one of the plastic explosives from his pack and rolled it under a urinal, before trying the door. Unlocked. He entered the hallway as if he were trying to clear it, and then bolted forward at full speed, his legs pumping like pistons.

This floor looked very different from the one he’d lived on. It still had that hospital-esque whitewashed look, but this was apparently a floor reserved for Patriot-employed scientists; each door had a name inscribed on it, and few had the elaborate keycard-activated locking mechanisms he remembered. It made sense, he supposed. If his room had had windows, he would’ve tried to break the glass the moment he was strong enough to walk. But these people, of course, were likely prisoners too -- they just weren’t considered to be flight risks.

One of them had left their office door ajar, and Jack ducked inside. There was a standard-size PC set up on the office’s white plastic desk, and he unwound the cable from around his neck, before jamming it into a port on the CPU. Immediately the machine sparked to life.

He willed his augmented reality goggles to turn on, and after a moment, they responded, clicking forward from where they lay folded at his temples. They bathed his field of vision in a greenish tint, and he felt the orange face shield slide down over his forehead, fastening itself over the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t quite instinctive yet -- he still had to mentally picture each step, consciously activating each peripheral himself -- but it was getting there. His natural, unaided eyes were beginning to seem inadequate.

His HUD was a flurry of activity. The virus was working, all right; in one corner of his vision, a text box full of raw computer code scrolled at lightning speeds, and above it, a pixelated loading bar ticked slowly towards 100%. He had no idea what he was looking at, of course -- he was no hacker. But somehow he figured that when it finished whatever it was doing, he would _really_ grab the Patriot troops’ attention.

In the floors above him, he imagined, they were already starting to swarm. He could all but hear the rhythmic thump of boots on tile. He wondered if, this time, they might have weapons better designed to kill him. Guns straight out of science fiction, perhaps. Radiation guns. Laser guns. It was hard to overestimate them.

But it didn’t matter. This was his chance for retaliation. They didn’t own him anymore. If he died here, he died a free man.

The virus finished uploading. The PC’s monitor flickered on, displaying a unicode rendition of some Japanese characters and the caption _TO LET THE WORLD BE._ On his HUD, a dialogue box with the text _REMOTE ACCESS PENDING, PLEASE STAND BY_ appeared, along with a timer frozen at 15:00.

Somewhere in the world, a man suddenly poured over his keyboard, his hands skirting the keys like a master pianist. For now, Jack’s job was over; until that countdown clock began to tick, it was all in this stranger’s hands.

Jack tugged the adapter from the nape of his neck, tossing it onto the floor. From outside, he could hear the clatter of machine gun fire, and that terrible, low moaning. Shit, the walking tank-drones _weren’t_ down yet! Moments later, he could hear Big Mama screaming in his ear: _“Fall back, all units! Raiden, what the hell happened? Did the remote hacker pull through?”_

Her call cut out before he could respond. Troops had begun pouring into the ground floor, their blank, black gear hauntingly familiar. He sprinted for the hallway as the men fired on him, and he skidded ungracefully around corners and bends, scattering explosives as he went. He could hear a shrill metallic _ping_ as a round bounced off his armor, and a shriek as it ricocheted back into human flesh. The mechanical groaning outside grew louder. He heard the deafening thud of an RPG shell. Inside and outside, the Patriot facility descended into bloody chaos.

And then, as abruptly as the violence had started, it ceased. The lights darkened. The men dropped to their knees, screaming and covering their ears. The lowing of the tank-drones fell silent. There was a pregnant pause, followed by the _thunk_ of a hundred magnetic locks unlatching at once.

The timer started ticking down. 14:59, 14:58, 14:57. The dialogue box on his HUD flickered, and then read _REMOTE ACCESS GRANTED, REBOOT IN PROGRESS._

Big Mama radioed him. She was breathing hard. “They’re down. The drones are down, and-- And I think the soldiers’ nanos are malfunctioning. Something’s wrong with them, I’m not sure what. Proceed as planned.”

The Patriot men seemed to have spontaneously fallen ill. Several of them removed their helmets; their eyes were glazed, their skin pale and clammy. They looked terrified. Jack stepped over them, as a few brave individuals began struggling to their hands and knees. He strode to the center of the room, slipped the last bundle of explosive charges from off of his shoulders, and straightened, his eyes flitting around behind his goggles.

It wasn’t long before he heard the yells and battlefield chatter of the Paradise Lost soldiers. They brought the helicopters down just outside the building, and the men flowed in like a tide, some with rifles, some with back braces and oxygen masks. They howled into the hallway, ordering anyone inside to drop their weapons and proceed outside. Most of the men stayed put, but as Jack watched the spectacle unfold around him, he saw a steady stream of panicked medical personnel head out towards the desert sunlight, their hands folded helplessly behind their heads. Several of the nurses and aides wheeled gurneys behind them. Jack caught an unwilling glimpse of one of the patients -- he looked to be a young boy, but where his thorax should have been, a set of clear tubes filled with white serum pulsed and twitched. He gazed blearily up at the ceiling, unaware of anything around him. Jack stood there in a stupor, feeling powerless to help.

The timer ticked down. A hundred feet above them, Big Mama watched the madness from the skies, biting her lip. This would be cutting it close, she knew.

People kept coming. It was as though the building itself were hemorrhaging. The Paradise Lost men made no attempt to triage, but simply waved them all on, assisting the walking wounded where they could. Several gurney-bound prisoners did not appear to be alive, or were wracked with spasms, their face a mask of unbridled agony. Soldiers abandoned their guns and crawled towards the exits. Lab coat-sporting doctors fled to their offices, in last-ditch efforts to save their research. The mob was vast and unending. So many people were crying.

Jack began scanning the crowd. Within minutes, he found his target. It was luck, sheer luck.

When he moved, the crowd parted easily for him; many of them, it seemed, had been previously unaware of his existence, and gazed upon him with incredulous, scared expressions. He towered over them when he stood upright, his spindly feet clicking. The man he sought was preoccupied with a file cabinet inside his office, which he was frantically trying to unlock. He didn’t notice Jack until he was well within arm’s reach.

Jack dug his taloned fingers into his shoulder, his claws piercing the cotton fabric of his jacket like a hypodermic slid through skin. He hurled the man off to one side, with enough torque and speed to make him tumble uselessly against the icy floor. When he scrambled to his feet, coughing and sputtering breathlessly, his blue eyes were wide with fear. The doomed horror of a prey animal when faced with the cold, exquisite brutality of an apex predator.

“ _You_ ,” he stammered, flattening himself against a wall. “Someone finished you?” Blood began to drip from his nose, and his wire-framed glasses were skewed on his face.

Jack inched silently towards him, dragging his nails along a wall. His fingers left deep gashes in the paint.

“ _Madnar_ ,” the young doctor hissed, his legs buckling under him. “It has to be _Madnar._ I _knew_ the old man had been plotting something.”

Jack scooped him up by his lapels and slammed him down again, his body making a resounding _smack_ as he struggled to catch himself. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, sprawled limply out on the floor.

“Stand up,” Jack snarled. Slowly. Every syllable carefully chosen, his voice a rumble, a vibration. His lips didn’t move.

“What?” Hudson gasped, crawling back. Jack stepped on his calf, snapping the bone. He screamed.

“You need to stand _up._ ” Jack bore down harder, until the pads of his foot met tile again. The doctor choked, clawing pathetically at the floor. Mercifully, he allowed the man a moment to recover, before yanking him up again, holding him against a wall with one hand. Blood flowed freely down his leg. He smelled as though he had soiled himself.

The man mumbled incoherently, a human mess, before his dry sobs mutated into a degraded sort of laughter. “Look at you,” he whispered, gazing up at Jack as his AR goggles retracted. “My God, just look at you. I wish I’d gotten to finish you myself. I would’ve made history. You’re incredible. You would’ve won me the Nobel prize.”

Jack’s face was a kabuki mask of demonic hatred, his eyes bulging, his lip curled up into a half-skeletal snarl. He had, briefly, considered letting the doctor live. He was a young man, after all, and no doubt warped and mentally mutilated by the Patriots. How could he not feel pity? How could he blame Samuel Hudson for his crimes, when he himself had done so much worse?

But then he thought back to the little girl. A brilliant child, sealed in a tiny prison for the rest of her life, to wilt and rot. Her mind, with nothing to feed it or foster it, left to decay in solitude. She would have been a simian. A lab animal.

Something less than human.

He jammed his fingers between Hudson’s lips, forcing them apart, and grabbed his lower jaw, yanking downwards with all of his strength. He’d meant to unhinge it and disfigure it, leaving him to nurse his wounds, but he underestimated himself. Rather than merely dislodging his jaw, the sheer force with which the monster pulled was enough to twist his neck violently to one side, shattering his cervical bones. His lower jaw tore clean off, along with a long shred of flesh from his esophageal tract. With just a bit more force he would have decapitated him.

An arterial spurt of blood speckled Jack’s body, the still-warm, heavy droplets oozing down his face. He dropped Hudson, watching as he gurgled and writhed. He still held his jaw.

Big Mama’s voice hissed in his ear. _“Two minutes and counting, everyone! Grab whoever you can and get the hell out!”_ She was right, he was sure; he hadn’t been checking the timer. He felt strangely numb, as the blood began to dry. Removed from himself. But very calm, much too calm. He let his fingers go limp, and felt something fall at his feet. He didn’t look down. A few people screamed, but as far as he could tell, they were lost in the crowd, just human blurs.

Big Mama’s helicopter was waiting for him. People were cramming themselves into the other Chinooks, all hands and arms, terror-stricken at the prospect of being left behind. Some clung to handholds and railings. Maybe they knew what was coming. As the choppers lifted off, jam-packed with Patriot workers, Jack gazed down at the carnage below. A Patriot cancer, freshly excised, the wound still wide and bleeding.

When the timer clicked down to zero, the Patriot compound erupted into flames. He had been imprecise about the placement of the explosives, but they’d loaded him with enough blasting power to take down a Vegas hotel; they couldn’t afford to leave the place standing. Big Mama watched by his side, her golden hair fluttering in the artificial wind, her face bearing the tempered pride of a queen. As the building crumbled, and the remaining stragglers were engulfed in smoke and ash, Jack was reminded of something. Something that had been boring a hole in his brain since they’d begun planning the attack.

“Big Mama,” he rasped. “The anti-Patriot contractors you hired for the hacking job… What were they like?”

“Two-man team, one’s a hacker and one’s the muscle. They only take jobs through the internet, and as you’d expect I can’t track their IP address. Call themselves ‘Philanthropy’. That’s all I know.”

“Do you still have their contact info?”

“Yeah,” she replied, lighting a cigarette. “Why? Do you have another job for ‘em?"

He wiped his chin on the back of his hand. It left a rust-red streak across his white pseudo-flesh. “Yeah. A hell of a job.”

 


End file.
